•I  I,  ^01 

M 


WRITERS  AND  READERS. 


WRITERS  AND  READERS 


GEORGE  BIRKBECK   HILL,  D.C.L. 

(Pembroke  College,  Oxford) 


Dreams,  books,  are  each  a  world  ;  and  books  we  know 
Are  a  substantial  world  both  pure  and  good." 

Words-worth. 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S   SONS 

NEW  YORK  LONDON 

87  WEST  TWENTY-THIRD   STREET  24   BEDFORD  STREET,  STRAND 

Sin  f.nuherbot!ur  JJress 
1892 


PREFACE. 

''T~AHE  lectures  which  form  this  little  work  were 
-*•  read  in  the  Hall  of  New  College,  before  the 
members  of  the  Teachers'  University  Association, 
who  were  in  residence  in  Oxford  during  part  of 
the  Long  Vacation  of  1891. 


2072134 


CONTENTS. 


LECTURES  I.-IV.— REVOLUTIONS  IN  LITERARY  TASTE. 

LECTURES  V.-VI.— THE  STUDY  OF  LITERATURE  AS  A 
PART  OF  EDUCATION. 


LECTURE  /. 


LECTURE  I. 

T  AM  often  amused  by  the  confident  air  with 
-*-  wnich  not  only  chance  readers,  but  even 
students  of  literature  appoint,  as  it  were,  the 
books  which  are  to  be  the  delight  of  posterity. 
Posterity,  it  has  been  well  said,  is  the  author's 
friend.  The  writer  who  cannot  catch  the  ear  of 
his  own  public  pleases  himself  with  the  thought 
that  his  voice  will  be  prolonged  by  the  echoes 
of  time,  and  will  sound  the  more  loudly  the 
farther  it  has  to  travel.  Southey,  who  with  all 
his  great  merits  as  an  ardent  and  thorough  student, 
is  scarcely  known  to  the  present  generation  but 
by  one  or  two  ballads  and  one  biography,  was 
supported  through  the  neglect  which  his  works 
encountered  by  the  confident  belief  that  posterity 
would  do  him  justice.  He  talks  in  one  place  "of 
exposing  the  real  character  and  history  of  the 
Romish  Church,  systematically  and  irrefragably, 


12  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

which  (he  says)  I  can  and  will  do,  in  books  which 
will  be  read  now  and  hereafter  ;  which  must  make 
a  part  hereafter  of  every  historical  library,  and 
which  will  live  and  act  when  I  am  gone."  Speaking 
of  the  need  under  which  he  had  always  lived  of 
gaining  his  livelihood  by  the  pen,  he  says :  "  Under 
more  favourable  circumstances  I  might  have  accom- 
plished more  and  better  things.  But  when  the 
grave-digger  has  put  me  to  bed  and  covered  me 
up,  it  will  not  be  long  before  it  will  be  perceived 
and  acknowledged  that  there  are  few  who  have 
done  so  much."  Of  his  poem  of  "  Madoc "  he  writes  : 
"  Unquestionably  the  poem  will  stand  and  flourish. 
.  .  .  William  Taylor  has  said  it  is  the  best  English 
poem  that  has  left  the  press  since  the  '  Paradise 
Lost ' ;  indeed  this  is  not  exaggerated  praise,  for 
unfortunately  there  is  no  competition."  His 
"  History  of  Brazil,"  he  prophecies,  "  will  ages 
hence  be  found  among  those  works  which  are  not 
destined  to  perish  ;  it  will  secure  for  me  a  remem- 
brance in  other  countries  as  well  as  in  my  own  ;  it 
will  be  to  the  Brazilians  what  the  work  of  Hero- 
dotus is  to  Europe."  J 

Who  can  be  churlish  enough  to  grudge  to  an 
honest  worker,  one  of  the  most  laborious  authors 

1  Southey's  "Life  and  Correspondence,"  ed.  1850,  ii.  359; 
iv.  354  ;  v.  274,  321. 


L— APPEALS  TO  POSTERITY.  13 

that  the  world  has  ever  seen,  the  comfort  which  he 
found  for  the  neglect  under  which  he  was  suffering? 
His  books,  it  is  true,  were  encumbering  his  pub- 
lisher's warehouse.  What  of  that?  He  appealed 
to  future  generations,  to  those  happy  times  when 
the  bubbles  shall  have  burst  which  are  raised  in 
the  vast  whirlpools  of  fashion,  and  the  bark  of  the 
poet  and  the  historian,  clear  of  the  froth,  shall  be 
seen  floating  securely  and  quietly  and  triumphantly 
down  the  stream  of  time.  Had  he  been  of  a  less 
hopeful  mind  he  might  have  got  chilled  by  the 
words  with  which  the  learned  Person  ends  his 
Preface  to  his  famous  "  Letters  to  Archdeacon 
Travis":  "  Mr.  Travis  and  I  may  address  our  letters 
to  posterity,  but  they  will  never  be  delivered 
according  to  the  direction."  Astronomers  tell  us 
that  the  nearest  fixed  star  is  at  so  vast  a  distance 
from  us  that,  in  spite  of  the  incredible  rapidity 
with  which  light  travels,  all  we  can  know  for 
certain  is  that  it  was  shining  at  the  time  of  the 
birth  of  a  man  of  middle  age.  There  are  other 
stars  so  remote  that  we  cannot  feel  sure  that  they 
did  not  fall  with  Julius  Caesar,  when  men  were 
scared  by  seeing 

"  The  strange  impatience  of  the  heavens." 
Were  a  new  constellation  formed  to-day  at  some 


14  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

comparatively  moderate  distance,  its  light  would 
perhaps  first  strike  upon  the  world  when  the 
grandchild  of  the  youngest  person  here  present 
was  falling  into  his  dotage.  Not  a  few  of  our 
literary  luminaries,  if  we  are  to  trust  what  they 
say  of  themselves  and  what  is  said  of  them,  are  in 
somewhat  the  same  case.  Their  light  has  not  yet 
reached  us,  the  denseness  through  which  it  has  to 
travel  having  much  the  same  effect  as  space ;  but 
it  will  strike  upon  our  descendants.  No  heart 
surely  can  be  so  hard  as  to  refuse  to  a  disappointed 
author  his  islands  of  the  blest,  on  the  other  side, 
not  of  the  western  waves,  but  of  the  centuries. 
But  the  case  is  altogether  different  when  pity  no 
longer  operates,  when  every  reader  presumes  to 
settle  who  they  are  who  are  to  be  welcomed  on 
those  happy  shores  "  with  the  sound  of  bells  and 
acclamations  of  the  people."  What  is  freely  allowed 
to  compassion  must  not  be  conceded  to  ignorance 
and  conceit.  The  taste  of  one  generation  is  not 
to  be  fixed  by  the  taste  of  another.  We  may  give 
our  favourite  authors  all  the  immortality  we  please. 
We  may  refuse  to  believe  that  an  age  can  ever 
come  so  lost  to  good  taste  as  to  decline  to  admire 
those  who  are  our  delight.  In  matters  of  taste 
each  age  will  judge  for  itself,  and  our  descendants, 
if  they  examine  into  our  judgments  and  our  pro- 


/.— DIRECTIONS  TO  POSTERITY.  15 

phecies,  will  certainly  obtain  from  them  some 
amusement,  but  perhaps  very  little  profit,  unless 
they  take  the  trouble  to  investigate  the  causes  that 
rendered  them  so  faulty. 

Nevertheless,  with  how  -confident  an  air  do  we 
hear  maintained  what  shall  be  the  reading,  not  only 
of  the  next,  but  even  of  succeeding  centuries.     The 
guardian  angels  seem  almost  to  be  heard  chanting, 
not  only  that  Britons  never  shall  be  slaves,  but 
that  they  never  shall  cease  to  be  readers  of  Macau- 
lay  or  Carlyle,  of  Herbert  Spencer  or  Ruskin,  of 
Browning   or   of   George   Eliot.     Nay,   there  are 
minor  stars,  whose  names  I  but  imperfectly  retain 
in  my  memory,  who  are  to  shine  with  increasing 
splendour   for   many  a  long  day  yet.     No   great 
while  ago  I  heard  in  this  University  of  Oxford  a 
learned    man    maintain    that   a  certain    novelist, 
whose  works  I  had   never   even   glanced  at,  and 
whose  name  I  have  now  forgotten,  will   be  read 
five  hundred   years  hence.      When,  as  sometimes 
happens,  my   opinion   is   demanded,  when    I    am 
asked   whether    this    favourite    author    and    that 
favourite   author   will   not   be  the  delight  of  our 
grandchildren  and  our  great-grandchildren,  I  never 
venture  to  go  beyond  a  negative  kind  of  prophecy. 
I  have  little  difficulty  in  coming  to  a  decision  as  to 
those  who  will  not  be  read  ;  but  no  prudent  man, 


16  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

who  sees  names  which  once  filled  everybody's 
mouth  now  scarce  known  to  the  student,  who  sees 
books  which  were  once  the  pride  of  every  library 
now  on  some  huckster's  stall,  labelled  "  All  in  this 
lot  at  a  penny  a  volume,"  will  venture  to  foretell 
immortality,  or  even  a  long  duration  of  popularity, 
to  any  work  whatsoever  of  his  own  day.  In  mat- 
ters of  taste  there  is  only  one  sure  judge,  and  that 
is  time.  "About  things,"  says  Johnson,  "on  which 
the  public  thinks  long  it  commonly  attains  to 
think  right."  It  is  not  one  or  two,  perhaps  not 
even  three  generations  which  can  arrive  at  a  final 
judgment  of  a  work.  The  vast  majority  even  of 
those  books  which  make  a  great  noise  are  for- 
gotten long  before  the  third  generation  is  reached  ; 
but  the  works  of  men  of  real  genius  require  at  least 
the  greater  part  of  a  century  before  their  value  can 
be  accurately  ascertained.  At  first  by  their  very 
originality  they  often  excite  anger  and  even 
contempt,  running  as  they  do  against  the  fashion 
of  the  day.  Before  they  can  get  justice  done  them 
they  must  establish  a  school  of  their  own;  but 
their  scholars  are  apt  to  pass  into  worshippers. 
The  neglect  which  they  at  first  encountered  gives 
way  to  extravagant  admiration  ;  they  are  rendered 
ridiculous  by  their  servile  imitators  ;  a  reaction 
sets  in,  and  once  more  they  are  placed  below  their 


I.—NE W  SCHOOLS  OF  POE TRY.  17 

just  level.  Then  there  begins  a  fresh  reaction  in 
their  favour,  till  the  balance  which  has  swung  now 
too  much  up,  and  now  too  much  down,  settles  at 
last,  and  marks  their  real  weight.  There  is  a 
passage  in  Johnson's  "  Life  of  Gray  "  which,  I  have 
always  thought,  illustrates  the  career  of  the  poet 
who  strikes  into  fresh  paths.  "  In  1757,"  he  writes, 
"Gray  published  'The  Progress  of  Poetry'  and 
'  The  Bard,'  two  compositions  at  which  the  readers 
of  poetry  were  at  first  content  to  gaze  in  mute 
amazement.  Some  that  tried  them  confessed  their 
inability  to  understand  them,  though  Warburton 
said  that  they  were  understood  as  well  as  the 
works  of  Milton  and  Shakespeare,  which  it  is  the 
fashion  to  admire.  Garrick  wrote  a  few  lines  in 
their  praise.  Some  hardy  champions  undertook 
to  rescue  them  from  neglect,  and  in  a  short  time 
many  were  content  to  be  shown  beauties  which 
they  could  not  see." 

Of  how  many  poets  whom  we  of  this  age  admire 
might  the  same  be  said  !  At  the  compositions 
of  Wordsworth,  of  Tennyson,  of  Browning,  "  the 
readers  of  poetry  were  at  first  content  to  gaze 
in  mute  amazement."  Many  who  tried  them  either 
could  not  understand  them,  or  thought  that  there 
was  nothing  in  them  to  understand.  Champions 
soon  arose ;  the  difficulty  experienced  in  discover- 

2 


1 8  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

ing  their  merits,  when  overcome,  became  a  source 
of  pride  ;  and  of  those  who  remained  blind,  "  many 
were  content  to  be  shown  beauties  which  they 
could  not  see." 

Jeffrey,  the  great  Edinburgh  reviewer,  had  treated 
Wordsworth  with  a  contempt  that  was  almost 
gross  in  its  violence.  His  "  Lyrical  Ballads "  he 
"  looked  upon  in  a  good  degree  as  poetical 
paradoxes — maintained  experimentally^  in  order 
to  display  talent  and  court  notoriety  ;  and  so 
maintained  with  no  more  serious  belief  in  their 
truth  than  is  usually  generated  by  an  ingenious 
and  animated  defence  of  other  paradoxes."  x 
Jeffrey  was  no  common  man  ;  in  him  there  was 
no  natural  dulness  of  fancy  and  imagination. 
Carlyle  has  described  his  "  bright-beaming,  swift 
and  piercing  hazel  eyes,  with  their  accompaniment 
of  rapid  keen  expression  in  the  other  lineaments 
of  face.  He  was,"  he  adds,  "by  no  means  the 
supreme  in  criticism  or  anything  else;  but  it  is 
certain  there  has  no  critic  appeared  among  us 
since  who  was  worth  naming  beside  him." 2 
Nevertheless,  with  all  his  fine  endowments,  he 
could  discover  in  the  great  poet  of  Nature  little 
beyond  talent  displayed  and  notoriety  courted. 

1  Edinburgh  Review,  November,  1814,  p.  4. 
*  Carlyle's  "Reminiscences,"  ed.  1881,  ii.  65. 


I— JEFFREY  AND  WORDSWORTH.  19 

I  would  be  content  as  a  warning  to  all  critics  to 
reprint  this  review  of  his  with  one  single  note.  It 
should  consist  of  the  quotation,  without  a  single 
word  of  comment,  of  the  following  lines,  almost 
unrivalled,  in  my  belief,  in  the  beauty  of  the 
thought  and  the  perfection  of  the  language  and  the 
rhythm  by  any  poem  of  any  poet  in  this  century : — 

"  Three  years  she  grew  in  sun  and  shower, 
Then  Nature  said,  '  A  lovelier  flower 

On  earth  was  never  sown  ; 
This  Child  I  to  myself  will  take  ; 
She  shall  be  mine,  and  I  will  make 
A  Lady  of  my  own. 

'  Myself  will  to  my  darling  be 

Both  law  and  impulse  :  and  with  me 

The  Girl  in  rock  and  plain, 
In  earth  and  heaven,  in  glade  and  bower, 
Shall  feel  an  overseeing  power 

To  kindle  or  restrain. 

'  She  shall  be  sportive  as  the  Fawn 
That  wild  with  glee  across  the  lawn 

Or  up  the  mountain  springs  ; 
And  hers  shall  be  the  breathing  balm, 
And  hers  the  silence  and  the  calm 

Of  mute  insensate  things. 

'  The  floating  Clouds  their  state  shall  lend 
To  her  ;  for  her  the  willow  bend  ; 
Nor  shall  she  fail  to  see 


20  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

Even  in  the  motions  of  the  Storm 
Grace  that  shall  mould  the  Maiden's  form 
Ey  silent  sympathy. 

'  The  Stars  of  midnight  shall  be  dear 
To  her  ;  and  she  shall  lean  her  ear 

In  many  a  secret  place 
Where  Rivulets  dance  their  wayward  round| 
And  beauty  born  of  murmuring  sound 

Shall  pass  into  her  face. 

'  And  vital  feelings  of  delight 

Shall  rear  her  form  to  stately  height, 

Her  virgin  bosom  swell  ; 
Such  thoughts  to  Lucy  I  will  give 
While  she  and  I  together  live 

Here  in  this  happy  Dell.' 

Thus  Nature  spake — The  work  was  done — 
How  soon  my  Lucy's  race  was  run  ! 

She  died,  and  left  to  me 
This  heath,  this  calm  and  quiet  scene  ; 
The  memory  of  what  has  been, 

And  never  more  will  be." 

The  critic  who  could  charge  Wordsworth  with 
courting  notoriety  when  he  wrote  these  lines, 
might  in  an  earlier  age  have  charged  Gray  with 
courting  undertakers  when  he  wrote  his  "  Elegy." 
Jeffrey  lived  long  enough  to  see  his  judgment-seat 
scorned  and  deserted  by  a  younger  generation. 
Fourteen  years  after  he  declared  that  Wordsworth 
with  all  his  great  natural  gifts  was  "  finally  lost 


I.—MILL  AND  WORDSWORTH.  21 

to  the  good  cause  of  poetry,"  a  young  thinker, 
who  had  been  trained  in  the  straightest  school  of 
the  Utilitarians,  found  in  the  despised  poet  that 
mental  relief  which  in  his  misery  he  had  elsewhere 
sought  in  vain.  "  I  had  learnt  by  experience," 
writes  John  Stuart  Mill,  "  that  the  passive  sus- 
ceptibilities needed  to  be  cultivated  as  well  as  the 
active  capacities,  and  required  to  be  nourished  and 
enriched  as  well  as  guided.  .  .  .  The  cultivation 
of  the  feelings  became  one  of  the  cardinal  points 
in  my  ethical  and  philosophical  creed.  ...  I  now 
began  to  find  meaning  in  the  things  which  I  had 
read  or  heard  about  the  importance  of  poetry  and 
art  as  instruments  of  human  culture."  He  goes  on 
to  describe  the  curious  dejection  into  which  he  had 
fallen,  and  the  vain  attempts  which  he  had  made 
to  find  relief  in  books.  Byron  he  had  tried,  but 
from  him  he  got  no  good.  He  took  up  Words- 
worth, and  found  in  his  poems  a  medicine  for  his 
mind  in  that  "  they  expressed  not  mere  outward 
beauty,  but  states  of  feeling,  and  of  thought 
coloured  by  feeling,  under  the  excitement  of 
beauty.  "They  seemed,"  he  continues,  "to  be  the 
very  culture  of  the  feelings  which  I  was  in  quest  of. 
...  I  found  that  he,  too,  had  had  similar  experience 
to  mine  ;  that  he  also  had  felt  that  the  first  fresh- 
ness of  youthful  enjoyment  of  life  was  not  lasting ; 


22  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

but  that  he  had  sought  for  compensation,  and 
found  it  in  the  way  in  which  he  was  now  teaching 
me  to  find  it.  The  result  was  that  I  gradually,  but 
completely,  emerged  from  my  habitual  depression, 
and  was  never  again  subject  to  it."  He  met  John 
Sterling,  whose  life  Carlyle  has  so  admirably 
written.  "  He  told  me,"  says  Mill,  "  how  he  and 
others  had  looked  upon  me  (from  hearsay  infor- 
mation) as  a  '  made'  or  manufactured  man,  having 
had  a  certain  impress  of  opinion  stamped  on  me 
which  I  could  only  reproduce  ;  and  what  a  change 
took  place  in  his  feelings  when  he  found  that 
Wordsworth,  and  all  which  that  name  implies, 
'  belonged '  to  me  as  much  as  to  him  and  his 
friends." ' 

However  strongly  the  current  of  opinion  set  in 
a  new  direction,  it  swept  past  the  old  reviewer, 
and  left  him  unmoved  and  unchanged.  Jeffrey,  in 
his  old  age,  finding  how  highly  Wordsworth  was 
thought  of,  "  resolved  to  re-peruse  his  poems,  and 
see  if  he  had  anything  to  retract."  He  was  com- 
forted by  discovering  that  "  except  perhaps  a  con- 
temptuous and  flippant  phrase  or  two "  there  was 
nothing  to  withdraw.2 

There  is  a  fine  passage  in  Thackeray's  "  New- 

1  "Autobiography  of  J.  S.  Mill,"  pp.  143,  148,  155. 
*  "  Diary  of  H.  C.  Robinson,"  iii.  140. 


I.— GODS,  OLD  AND  NEW.  23 

comes  "  where  we  read  how  the  old  Colonel  was 
puzzled  when  he  gathered  round  him  at  dinner 
his  son's  literary  friends,  "  and  the  merits  of  their 
poets  and  writers  were  discussed  with  the  claret. 
. . .  He  heard  opinions  that  amazed  and  bewildered 
him.  He  heard  that  Byron  was  no  great  poet, 
though  a  very  clever  man.  He  heard  that  there 
had  been  a  wicked  persecution  against  Mr.  Pope's 
memory  and  fame,  and  that  it  was  time  to  reinstate 
him  ;  that  his  favourite,  Dr.  Johnson,  talked  ad- 
mirably, but  did  not  write  English  ;  that  young 
Keats  was  a  genius  to  be  estimated  in  future  days 
with  young  Raphael  ;  and  that  a  young  gentle- 
man of  Cambridge,  who  had  lately  published  two 
volumes  of  verses,  might  take  rank  with  the 
greatest  poets  of  all.  Dr.  Johnson  not  write 
English !  Lord  Byron  not  one  of  the  greatest 
poets  of  the  world !  Sir  Walter  a  poet  of  the 
second  order!  Mr.  Pope  attacked  for  inferiority 
and  want  of  imagination  !  Mr.  Keats  and  this 
young  Mr.  Tennyson  of  Cambridge  the  chief  of 
modern  poetic  literature  !  What  were  these  new 
dicta,  which  Mr.  Warrington  delivered  with  a  puff 
of  tobacco  smoke ;  to  which  Mr.  Honeyman 
blandly  assented,  and  Clive  listened  with  pleasure? 
Such  opinions  were  not  of  the  Colonel's  time.  He 
tried  in  vain  to  construe  '  QEnone,'  and  to  make 


24  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

sense  of '  Lamia.'  '  Ulysses '  he  could  understand  ; 
but  what  were  these  prodigious  laudations  bestowed 
on  it  ?  And  that  reverence  for  Mr.  Wordsworth, 
what  did  it  mean  ?  Had  he  not  written  '  Peter 
Bell,'  and  been  turned  into  deserved  ridicule  by  all 
the  reviews  ?  Was  that  dreary  '  Excursion  '  to  be 
compared  to  Goldsmith's  'Traveller,'  or  Dr.  John- 
son's '  Imitation  of  the  Tenth  Satire  of  Juvenal '  ? 
If  the  young  men  told  the  truth,  where  had  been 
the  truth  in  his  own  young  days  ;  and  in  what 
ignorance  had  our  forefathers  been  brought  up  ? 
— Mr.  Addison  was  only  an  elegant  essayist  and 
shallow  trifler!  All  these  opinions  were  openly 
uttered  over  the  Colonel's  claret,  as  he  and  Mr. 
Binnie  sat  wondering  at  the  speakers  who  were 
knocking  the  gods  of  their  youth  about  their 
ears."  * 

Our  gods,  let  us  raise  them  on  as  lofty  pedestals 
as  we  please,  and  fall  down  before  them  as  low  as 
we  can,  let  us  crown  them  with  wreaths  and  chap- 
lets,  and  send  up  the  incense  before  them  in  clouds, 
will,  if  only  we  live  long  enough,  in  all  likelihood 
be  knocked  about  our  ears  too.  The  more  ex- 
travagant has  been  our  adoration,  the  worse  will 
be  the  belabouring  which  they  will  receive.  "  Be  it 
known  unto  you,  oh  past  generation,"  our  children 
1  "  The  Newcomes,"  chap.  xxi. 


I.— MR.  RUSKIN.  25 

will  say,  "  that  we  will  not  serve  your  gods,  nor 
worship  the  golden  images  which  you  have  set 
up."  In  their  rebellion  they  may  even  go  a  step 
further,  and  maintain  that  the  images  were  not 
golden,  but  only  gilt. 

Mr.  Ruskin,  writing  in  the  year  1857,  when  he 
had  all  the  ripeness  of  a  man  not  far  off  his  fortieth 
year,  said  :  "  Mrs.  Browning's  '  Aurora  Leigh '  is,  so 
far  as  I  know,  the  greatest  poem  which  the  century 
has  produced  in  any  language."  Why  in  the  cen- 
tury, among  foreigners,  Goethe  and  Victor  Hugo, 
among  Englishmen,  Wordsworth,  Scott,  Keats, 
Shelley,  Byron,  Landor,  Tennyson,  and  Browning 
had  written  either  all  or  at  least  many  of  their 
greatest  poems.  Before  the  best  that  the  greatest 
of  these  men  wrote  is  to  be  placed  "Aurora  Leigh"! 
Our  amazement  at  such  an  assertion  may  be 
tempered  by  respect,  but,  nevertheless,  amazement 
it  remains.  "  Of  reflective  prose,"  says  the  same 
writer,  "  read  chiefly  Bacon,  Johnson,  and  Helps." 
It  is  not  easy  to  preserve  one's  gravity  at  this 
strange  fellowship.  I  can  picture  to  myself  the 
feelings,  first  of  bewilderment,  and  then  almost  of 
despair,  of  some  ardent  disciple  of  the  great  master, 
as  he  passed  from  Bacon's  "  Essays  "  through  the 
"  Rambler  "  and  "  Rasselas  "  to  Sir  Arthur  Helps's 
"  Friends  in  Council."  I  once  tried  a  few  pages  of 


26  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

it,  but  gave  it  up  as  hopelessly  commonplace.  He 
has  one  chance  for  immortality  ;  he  may  be  re- 
membered as  the  otherwise  unknown  author  who 
was  classed  by  Mr.  Ruskin  with  Bacon  and  John- 
son.1 

Two  hundred  years  ago  there  was  a  City  poet, 
Elkanah  Settle  by  name,  of  whom  John  Wilkes 
said  :  "  Elkanah  Settle  sounds  so  queer,  who  can 
expect  much  from  that  name  ? "  At  one  time, 
nevertheless,  he  was  the  rival  of  the  great  Dryden. 
"  Such,"  says  Johnson,  "  are  the  revolutions  of 
fame,  or  such  is  the  prevalence  of  fashion,  that 
the  man  whose  works  have  not  yet  been  thought 
to  deserve  the  care  of  collecting  them,  who  died 
forgotten  in  an  hospital,  and  whose  latter  years 
were  spent  in  contriving  shows  for  fairs,  and  carry- 
ing an  elegy  or  epithalamium,  of  which  the  begin- 
ning and  end  were  occasionally  varied,  but  the  in- 
termediate parts  were  always  the  same,  to  every 
house  where  there  was  a  funeral  or  a  wedding, 
might  with  truth  have  had  inscribed  upon  his 
stone : 

" '  Here  lies  the  rival  and  antagonist  of  Dryden.' "  a 
Violent  indeed  are  the  revolutions  in  taste  which 

1  "Elements  of  Drawing,"  ist  ed.,  p.  348. 
0  Johnson's  "Works,"  ed.  1825,  vii.  277. 


I.— BLAIR  AND  POMFRET.  27 

the  world  has  seen.  Southey,  writing  fifty  years 
ago  about  those  books  of  which  the  copyright  was 
of  the  greatest  value,  says  that  within  his  recol- 
lection among  the  five  most  valuable  of  all  would 
have  been  Blair's  "  Lectures  on  Rhetoric "  and 
Blair's  "  Sermons."  *  In  Mr.  Alfred  Morrison's 
great  collection  of  autographs  is  a  letter  from 
Blair's  publisher,  William  Strahan,  announcing  a 
draft  of  ^500  as  the  last  payment  for  the  "  Lectures 
on  Rhetoric."  What  the  previous  payments  had 
been  I  do  not  know.  How  popular  his  sermons 
once  were  the  bookstalls  still  testify  ;  into  what 
neglect  they  have  fallen  is  shown  by  the  price  at 
which  they  are  offered  for  sale.  Three-quarters  of 
a  century  after  the  death  of  the  poet  John  Pomfret 
it  was  said,  that  "perhaps  no  composition  in  our 
language  had  been  oftener  perused  than  his 
"  Choice."  2  Another  quarter  of  a  century  passed, 
and  the  hundred  years  were  complete ;  yet  we 
find  Southey  asking  :  "  Why  is  Pomfret  the  most 
popular  of  the  English  poets  ?  The  fact  is  certain, 
and  the  solution  would  be  useful."  3  It  is  not  un- 
likely that  there  is  no  one  in  this  room  but  myself 
who  has  read  this  poem.  Let  me  read  therefore 

1  Southey's  "Life  and  Letters,"  vi.  355. 
a  Johnson's  "  Works,"  vii.  222. 
3  Southey's  "Specimens,"  i.  91. 


28  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

to  you  a  few  lines,  that  you  may  judge  of  the  value 
of  popularity  as  a  test : 

"  If  Heaven  the  grateful  liberty  would  give, 
That  I  might  choose  my  method  how  to  live, 
And  all  those  hours,  propitious  Fate  should  lend 
In  blissful  ease  and  satisfaction  spend  ; 
Near  some  fair  town  I'd  have  a  private  seat, 
Built  uniform  ;  not  little,  not  too  great  ; 
Better,  if  on  a  rising  ground  it  stood, 
On  this  side  fields,  on  that  a  neighb'ring  wood ; 
It  should  within  no  other  things  contain 
But  what  are  useful,  necessary,  p'ain  : 
Methinks  'tis  nauseous,  and  I'd  ne'er  endure 
The  needless  pomp  of  gaudy  furniture. 
A  little  garden,  grateful  to  the  eye, 
And  a  cool  rivulet  run  murm'ring  by, 
On  whose  delicious  banks  a  stately  row 
Of  shady  limes  or  sycamores  should  grow  ; 
At  th'  end  of  which  a  silent  study  plac'd 
Should  be  with  all  the  noblest  authors  grac'd." 

Our  grandfathers  or  our  great-grandfathers 
might  with  some  fair  show  of  reason  have 
maintained  that  it  was  impossible  to  believe  that 
a  poem  which  had  so  well  stood  the  test  of  time 
would  ever  sink  into  forgetfulness.  Let  me 
suggest  to  you  that  if  any  one  in  your  hearing 
foretells  immortality  for  some  writer  for  whom 
you  have  no  relish,  you  should  ask  him  at  once 
whether  he  has  read  Pomfret's  "  Choice." 

I    will    contrast    with     these     lines    that    fine 


I—THE  CHOICE  OF  LIFE.  29 

passage  in  which  Johnson  also  describes  a  choice 
of  life.  He  tells  the  story  of  his  own  early  years  ; 
he  recounts  the  eager  hopes  with  which  he  had 
entered  this  great  university,  and  the  ills  which 
had  assailed  him  in  the  outside  world.  In  his 
old  age,  when  he  was  prosperous  and  famous,  he 
one  day  read  the  lines  aloud.  As  all  the  troubles 
he  had  undergone  trooped  back  to  his  memory 
he  burst  into  a  passion  of  tears.  So  in  the  court 
of  Alcinous  Ulysses  wept  when  he  heard  the 
sweet  singer  tell  of  the  sufferings  of  the  Achaeans 
beneath  the  walls  of  Troy. 

"When  first  the  college  rolls  receive  his  name, 
The  young  enthusiast  quits  his  ease  for  fame  ; 
Through  all  his  veins  the  fever  of  renown 
Spreads  from  the  strong  contagion  of  the  gown  ; 
O'er  Bodley's  dome  his  future  labours  spread, 
And  Bacon's  mansion  trembles  o'er  his  head. 
Are  these  thy  views  ?     Proceed,  illustrious  youth, 
And  virtue  guard  thee  to  the  throne  of  truth  ! 
Yet,  should  thy  soul  indulge  the  gen'rous  heat 
Till  captive  science  yields  her  last  retreat ; 
Should  reason  guide  thee  with  her  brightest  ray, 
And  pour  on  misty  doubt  resistless  day  ; 
Should  no  false  kindness  lure  to  loose  delight, 
Nor  praise  relax,  nor  difficulty  fright ; 
Should  tempting  novelty  thy  cell  refrain, 
And  sloth  effuse  her  opiate  fumes  in  vain  ; 
Should  beauty  blunt  on  fops  her  fatal  dart, 
Nor  claim  the  triumph  of  a  letter'd  heart ; 
Should  no  disease  thy  torpid  veins  invade, 


3o  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

Nor  melancholy's  phantoms  haunt  thy  shade  ; 
Yet  hope  not  life  from  grief  or  danger  free, 
Nor  think  the  doom  of  man  revers'd  for  thee  : 
Deign  on  the  passing  world  to  turn  thine  eyes, 
And  pause  awhile  from  letters,  to  be  wise  ; 
There  mark  what  ills  the  scholar's  life  assail, 
Toil,  envy,  want,  the  patron,  and  the  gaol. 
See  nations,  slowly  wise  and  meanly  just, 
To  buried  merit  raise  the  tardy  bust. 
If  dreams  yet  flatter,  once  again  attend, 
Hear  Lydiat's  life,  and  Galileo's  end." 

The  last  line  of  manuscript  that  Sir  Walter 
Scott  sent  to  press,  the  line  with  which  he  closed 
his  glorious  series  of  poems  and  romances,  was  a 
quotation  from  the  "  Vanity  of  Human  Wishes." 

If  popularity  is  the  measure  of  merit  the  pay- 
ment of  the  publisher  is  often  the  measure  of 
popularity.  Tried  by  this  standard  how  ridiculous 
is  the  general  judgment.  Goldsmith,  when  asked 
at  a  Royal  Academy  dinner  whether  he  was  going 
to  bring  out  a  new  poem,  replied :  "  I  cannot 
afford  to  court  the  draggle-tail  muses,  they  would 
let  me  starve."  He  had  already  given  to  the 
world  his  "Traveller"  and  "Deserted  Village." 
He  had  not  been  dead  twenty  years  when 
Erasmus  Darwin,  for  the  second  part  of  his 
"Botanic  Garden,"  was  paid  a  thousand  guineas 
—  just  fifty  times  as  much  as  Goldsmith  had 
received  for  "The  Traveller,"  sixty-six  times  as 


/.— PA  YMENTS  OF  A  UTHORS.  31 

much  as  Johnson  had  received  for  the  second  of 
his  great  poems,  "The  Vanity  of  Human  Wishes," 
and  more  than  a  hundred  times  as  much  as 
Milton  had  received  for  the  "  Paradise  Lost." 
Wordsworth's  "  Lyrical  Ballads,"  and  Coleridge's 
"  Ancient  Mariner,"  which  were  published  together 
in  one  small  volume  fell  still-born  from  the  press. 
Five  hundred  copies  were  printed,  but  so  few 
were  sold  that  the  publisher  parted  with  the  bulk 
of  them  to  a  bookseller  at  a  loss.  The  copyright 
was  looked  upon  as  worthless,  and  was  returned 
to  the  authors.  Wordsworth  had  almost  reached 
the  age  of  fifty  when  in  a  letter  to  a  friend,  he 
said :  "  I  have  never  been  much  of  a  salesman 
in  matters  of  literature  ;  the  whole  of  my  returns 
— I  do  not  say  my  net-profits,  but  returns  from 
the  writing  trade  not  amounting  to  seven-score 
pounds." x  By  this  time  he  had  written  all  his 
finest  poems  —  almost  all  that  are  included  in 
Matthew  Arnold's  selection — and  the  wages  of 
these  long  years  did  not  amount  to  the  sum  that 
a  leading  barrister  or  a  fashionable  physician 
sometimes  makes  in  a  single  day.  He  had  need 
of  plain  living  to  support  his  high  thinking. 

Robertson,  for  his  second  work,  "  The  History 
of  Charles  V.,"  was  paid   £3,800,  while   Thomas 
1  Wordsworth's  "Life,"  ed.  1851,  i.  122  ;  ii.  207. 


32  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

Carlyle,  after  twenty  years  of  such  labour  as 
Robertson  never  dreamed  of,  had  not  been  able 
with  all  his  copyrights  and  his  current  earnings  to 
stretch  his  average  yearly  income  beyond  £150. 
If  his  "  French  Revolution "  failed,  as  his  other 
books  had  failed,  "  he  had  resolved  to  abandon 
literature,  buy  spade  and  rifle,  and  make  for  the 
backwoods  of  America."  r  He  had  reached  his 
fortieth  year  when  he  was  thus  hovering  almost 
on  the  brink  of  despair. 

According  to  Addison  "men  of  the  best  sense 
are  always  diffident  of  their  private  judgment  till 
it  receives  a  sanction  from  the  public.  Provoco  ad 
populum"  he  continues,  "  I  appeal  to  the  people, 
was  the  usual  saying  of  a  very  excellent  dramatic 
poet,  when  he  had  any  disputes  with  particular 
persons  about  the  justness  and  regularity  of  his 
productions."2  In  many  cases,  however,  the 
appeal  to  the  people  was  worse  even  than  the 
appeal  to  the  Court  of  Chancery  in  the  days  of 
old.  Unless  the  suitor  in  these  literary  cases  had 
means  of  his  own  he  was  likely  to  die  of  hunger 
long  before  the  final  decision  in  his  favour  was 
given.  "What  porridge  had  John  Keats?"  Even 
when  the  decision  has  been  given  how  wavering 

1  Froude's  "  Life  of  Carlyle,"  Part  I.  ii.  477  ;  Part  II.  ii.  161. 
•  The  Guardian,  No.  98. 


I— CARL  VLB'S  "  REMINISCENCES"  33 

often  is  the  execution  of  the  sentence !  If  I  can 
trust  my  judgment  no  nobler  chapter  in  biography 
has  been  published  these  latter  years  than 
Carlyle's  brief  life  of  his  father,  the  stonemason 
of  Ecclefcchan.  It  was  written  nearly  sixty  years 
ago,  when  his  style  was  at  its  best ;  written,  too, 
under  deep  feeling,  for  it  was  composed  in  "  the 
first  dark  days  of  death."  It  is  a  noble  picture  of 
honest  work  and  honest  poverty,  and  manly 
independence.  It  is  a  sermon  on  the  text,  "  We 
dare  be  poor  for  all  that,"  and  the  preacher  is  not 
unworthy  of  the  poet.  It  is  the  very  gospel  of 
labour.  I  would  have  it  a  reading  book  in  every 
school  in  England — in  Eton  and  Harrow,  that 
they  might  learn  there  the  unworthiness  of  idle- 
ness ;  in  Whitechapel  and  Stoke  Pogis,  that  they 
might  learn  there  the  full  dignity  of  labour. 
There  would  soon  be  no  hanging  the  head  for 
honest  poverty.  I  know  how  it  has  encouraged 
me.  As  day  after  day,  week  after  week,  and 
month  after  month  I  once  toiled  at  a  long,  and 
heavy,  and  dull  piece  of  work,  where  the  greatest 
accuracy  was  needed,  I  was  cheered  and 
strengthened  by  the  thought  of  the  old  Scottish 
stonemason  so  doing  his  work  that  it  should 
never  have  to  be  done  again.  "  Let  me  write  my 
books  as  he  built  his  houses,"  was  his  son's  prayer. 


34  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

This  admirable  memoir  was  published  with 
Carlyle's  other  "  Reminiscences  "  as  they  are  called. 
In  the  rest  of  the  book  there  was  not  a  little  that 
justly  roused  indignation,  and  even  anger,  so  harsh, 
so  arrogant,  I  might  even  say  so  insolent  was  often 
his  judgment  of  his  contemporaries.  Nevertheless, 
with  all  its  faults  it  is  irradiated  by  genius.  With 
a  rapid  touch,  but  with  the  touch  of  a  master,  we 
have  sketched  for  us  the  likenesses  of  many  a  man 
and  woman  renowned  in  the  literary  world  of 
London.  We  have  the  author's  own  likeness 
drawn  by  himself  with  innumerable  strokes — a 
man  well  worth  studying,  for  he  was  cast  in  no 
common  mould.  We  must  go  back  to  Samuel 
Johnson  before  we  can  find  his  fellow  in  the 
strangeness  and  the  rugged  strength  of  his 
character.  The  book  came,  as  it  were,  like  a  gift 
from  the  grave  of  one  who,  if  never  popular,  was 
at  all  events  famous.  Editor  and  publisher  alike 
must,  with  good  reason,  have  counted  on  a  great 
sale.  It  reached  no  second  edition.  Some  years 
later,  it  is  true,  by  a  rival  editor  a  revised  text 
was  brought  out,  but  this  was  due,  not  to  the 
popular  demand,  but  to  the  natural  and  proper 
desire  to  correct  the  strange  blunders  of  the  editor, 
transcriber,  or  printer.  Yet  this  is  the  age  of 
reminiscences  and  memoirs.  Men  who  do  not 


I.— POPULAR  MEMOIRS.  35 

know  how  to  write  recount  what  was  never  worth 
the  telling.  They  publish  what  they  call  their 
recollections.  Their  foolish  and  impertinent 
gossip  is  eagerly  brought  up.  It  satisfies,  to 
borrow  Coleridge's  words,  "  those  two  contrary 
yet  co-existing  propensities  of  human  nature, 
indulgence  of  sloth  and  hatred  of  vacancy." 
"  This  genus  of  amusement,"  he  continues,  "  com- 
prises as  its  species,  gaming,  swinging  or  swaying 
on  a  chair  or  gate,  spitting  over  a  bridge,  smoking, 
snuff-taking,  tete-a-tete  quarrels  after  dinner  between 
husband  and  wife ;  conning  word  by  word  all  the 
advertisements  of  the  Daily  Advertiser  in  a  public 
house  on  a  rainy  day,"  &c.,  &c.,  &C.1  These 
memoirs  have  their  day  just  as  their  authors  have 
their  money. 

"  The  earth  hath  bubbles,  as  the  water  has, 
And  these  are  of  them." 

One  hundred  years  hence  Carlyle's  rugged 
character  will  still  interest  the  world  and  his 
"Reminiscences"  will  still  be  read.  Perhaps  some 
editor,  a  harmless  drudge,  will  almost  swamp  the 
text  beneath  an  inundation  of  footnotes. 

The  judgments  of  men  of  letters  and  even  of 
genius  are  scarcely  less  faulty  than  those  of  the 
1  Coleridge's  "  Biographia  Literaria,"  p.  24. 


36  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

common  run.  I  once  had  in  my  study  an  un- 
published autograph  letter  of  David  Hume,  dated 
January  30,  1773.  It  is  written  to  his  friend  and 
publisher,  William  Strahan,  who  had  done  all 
that  a  friend  and  publisher  could  do  to  induce 
him  to  carry  his  "History"  two  or  three  reigns 
beyond  the  Revolution.  Even  George  III.  had 
interested  himself  in  this,  and  in  augmenting  the 
historian's  pension  had  laid  it  down  as  a  condition 
that  he  should  continue  his  "History."  Not  a  single 
chapter  for  all  that  did  he  add.1  When  Strahan 
found  that  his  friend  was  obstinate  in  the  indo- 
lence of  £1,100  a  year,  he  suggested  that  the 
task  should  be  put  into  the  hands  of  some  other 
writer. 

Hume  replied  : 

"Considering  the  Treatment  I  have  met  with, 
it  would  have  been  very  silly  for  me  at  my  years 
to  continue  writing  any  more ;  and  still  more 
blameless  to  warp  my  Principles  and  Sentiments 
in  conformity  to  the  Prejudices  of  a  stupid,  factious 
Nation,  with  whom  I  am  heartily  disgusted. 

1  Smollett's  continuation  is,  properly  speaking,  no  con- 
tinuation at  all ;  it  is  merely  the  concluding  part  of  that 
writer's  "  Complete  History  of  England,  from  the  descent 
of  Julius  Caesar  to  the  Treaty  of  Aix-la-Chapelle  in  1748," 
which  was  published  earlier  than  six  of  the  eight  octavo 
volumes  of  which  Hume's  "  History"  is  composed. 


I.— HUME  ON  ENGLISHMEN.  37 

"  I  wish  my  Continuators  good  Success  ;  though 
I  believe  they  have  sense  enough  not  to  care 
whether  they  meet  with  it  or  not.  Macpherson 
has  Style  and  Spirit,  but  is  hot-headed,  and 
consequently  without  Judgment.  Sir  John  Dal- 
rymple  has  Spirit,  but  no  Style,  and  still  less 
Judgment  than  the  other.  I  should  think  Dr. 
Douglas,  if  he  would  undertake  it,  a  better  hand 
than  either.  Or  what  think  you  of  Andrew 
Stuart  ?  For  as  to  any  Englishman,  that  Nation 
is  so  sunk  in  Stupidity  and  Barbarism  and  Faction 
that  you  may  as  well  think  of  Lapland  for  an 
author.  The  best  Book  that  has  been  writ  by 
any  Englishman  these  thirty  years  (for  Dr. 
Franklyn  is  an  American)  is  'Tristram  Shandy,' 
bad  as  it  is  ;  a  Remark  which  may  astonish  you, 
but  which  you  will  find  true  on  Reflection." x 

You  may  well  wonder  how  Dr.  Franklin's  name 
got  hitched  in  here.  It  is  highly  probable  that 
Hume,  who  was  a  thorough  Frenchman  in  his  love 
of  paying  pretty  compliments,  thought  that  this 
passage  would  be  shown  to  the  American  phi- 
losopher. Strahan  had  added  as  a  postscript  to 
his  last  letter,  which  Hume  had  just  received  : 
"  Dr.  Franklin,  who  sits  at  my  elbow,  desires 

1  "  Letters  of  David  Hume  to  William  Strahan,"  ed.  by 
G.  B.  Hill,  p.  255. 


38  WRITERS  ANj>  READERS. 

to  be  affectionately  remembered  to  you,  and  to 
your  worthy  sister,  who  was  so  kind  to  him."  In 
whatever  way  it  came  to  pass  that  he  was  men- 
tioned, Hume  clearly  implies  that  his  books  were 
better  than  any  that  had  been  written  by  English- 
men within  the  last  thirty  years.  That  period  had 
not,  it  is  true,  been  so  rich  in  great  works  as  many 
other  periods  in  our  history.  Nevertheless,  even 
when  the  works  of  Irishmen,  Scotchmen,  and 
Welshmen  were  excluded,  it  could  boast  of  having 
given  birth  to  "  Clarissa "  and  "  Sir  Charles 
Grandison,"  "Tom  Jones"  and  "Amelia,"  the 
great  Dictionary,  the  "  Rambler  "  and  "  Rasselas," 
Blackstone's  "Commentaries,"  Collins'  "Odes,"  and 
all  Gray's  "  Poems."  In  "  this  nation  so  sunk  in 
stupidity  and  barbarism  and  faction,"  this  Lapland 
..."  This  blessed  plot,  this  earth,  this  realm,  this 
England  " — it  had  once  been  called — in  it,  I  say, 
at  the  time  when  this  peevish  genius  was  writing 
were  living,  of  various  ages,  some  with  their  life 
well-nigh  lived,  others  with  it  just  begun,  but  all 
born  of  English  stock — Samuel  Johnson,  with  his 
"  Lives  of  the  Poets "  not  yet  written  ;  Horace 
Walpole,  with  his  "  Letters  "  not  yet  published  ; 
Gibbon,  with  his  "History  of  the  Decline  and  Fall " 
already  begun  ;  Blackstone,  Cowper,  Jeremy  Ben- 
tham,  Fanny  Burncy,  Crabbe,  Porson,  Cobbett, 


I. —HUME  AND  ROUSSEAU.  39 

Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  and  Sydney  Smith.  No 
bad  show  for  Lapland !  Wordsworth,  we  might 
almost  suspect,  had  felt  the  reproach  that  was  thus 
cast  upon  his  cradle,  for,  speaking  of  Adam  Smith, 
he  called  him,  "the  worst  critic,  David  Hume  not 
excepted,  that  Scotland,  a  soil  to  which  this  sort 
of  weed  seems  natural,  has  produced."  r 

A  prophecy  which  Hume  made  about  Rousseau 
is  not  less  absurd  than  the  judgment  which  he 
passed  on  English  men  of  letters.  At  first  there 
were  few  who  thought  more  highly  than  he  did  of 
that  unhappy  genius.  "  I  revere  his  greatness  of 
mind,"  he  wrote,  "  which  makes  him  fly  obligations 
and  dependence,  and  I  have  the  vanity  to  think 
that  through  the  course  of  my  life  I  have  en- 
deavoured to  resemble  him  in  those  maxims."  He 
places  him  "  among  the  first  writers  of  the  age." 
His  "  Treatise  on  Education  "  "  carries,"  he  says, 
"  the  stamp  of  a  great  genius  ;  and  what  enhances 
its  beauty,  the  stamp  of  a  very  particular  genius." 
Suddenly  Rousseau,  in  one  of  his  fits  of  wild  sus- 
picion, in  a  letter  that  bears  the  mark  both  of 
genius  and  madness,  attacked  his  friend  and  bene- 
factor. "  He  has  had,"  wrote  Hume  to  Adam 
Smith,  "the  satisfaction  during  a  time  of  being 
much  talked  of;  the  thing  in  the  world  he  most 
1  Wordsworth's  "  Works,"  ed.  1857,  vi.  367. 


40  WRITERS  AJ\D  READERS. 

desires ;  but  it  has  been  at  the  expense  of  being 
consigned  to  perpetual  neglect  and  oblivion." * 
Into  what  kind  of  neglect  and  oblivion  Rousseau 
was  to  fall  was  shown  two-and-twenty  years  after 
this  letter  was  written,  by  the  outbreak  of  the 
French  Revolution. 

It  was  not,  however,  only  Scotchmen  among 
men  of  letters  who  last  century  were  absurd  in 
their  judgments.  Goldsmith  says  of  Dante  that 
"  he  addressed  a  barbarous  people  in  a  method 
suited  to  their  apprehensions  ;  united  Purgatory 
and  the  River  Styx,  St.  Peter  and  Virgil,  heaven 
and  hell  together,  and  shows  a  strange  mixture  of 
good  sense  and  absurdity.  The  truth  is  he  owes 
most  of  his  reputation  to  the  obscurity  of  the 
times  in  which  he  lived."2  When  Horace  Walpole 
saw  Garrick  for  the  first  time  he  wrote  :  "All  the 
run  is  now  after  Garrick,  a  wine  merchant,  who  is 
turned  player  at  Goodman's  Fields.  He  plays  all 
parts,  and  is  a  very  good  mimic.  His  acting  I 
have  seen,  and  may  say  to  you,  who  will  not  tell  it 
again  here,  I  see  nothing  wonderful  in  it."  3  Gray 
agreed  with  Walpole  in  this.  "Did  I  tell  you 

1  "  Letters  of  David  Hume  to  William  Strahan,"  pp.  78, 
83- 

a  "  An  Enquiry  into  the  Present  State  of  Polite  Learn- 
ing," chap.  iv. 

3  Walpoles  "  Letters,"  i.  168. 


/.  -' '  TRISTRA M  SHAND  F."  4 1 

about  Mr.  Garrick,"  he  writes,  "  that  the  town  are 
horn-mad  after?  There  are  a  dozen  dukes  of  a 
night  at  Goodman's  Fields  sometimes  ;  and  yet 
I  am  stiff  in  the  opposition."  l  Only  nine  years 
after  the  last  volume  of  Sterne's  great  novel  was 
published — a  work  which  I  venture  to  think  is  as 
likely  to  be  immortal  as  it  is  certainly  immoral — 
Johnson  said  :  "  Nothing  odd  will  do  long.  '  Tris- 
tram Shandy'  did  not  last."  Horace  Walpole 
called  it  "  the  dregs  of  nonsense."  Goldsmith 
described  Sterne  as  a  blockhead,  and  worse  than  a 
blockhead.  Dr.  Farmer,  Master  of  Emmanuel  Col- 
lege, Cambridge,  the  eminent  Shakesperian  critic, 
said  one  day  to  the  younger  members  of  that 
society  :  "  You  young  men  seem  very  fond  of  this 
'  Tristram  Shandy  ' ;  but  mark  my  words,  however 
much  it  may  be  talked  about  at  present,  yet, 
depend  upon  it,  in  the  course  cf  twenty  years 
should  any  one  wish  to  refer  to  it  he  will  be 
obliged  to  go  to  an  antiquary  to  inquire  for 
it."2  The  young  men  grew,  we  may  hope,  to  be 
old  men,  but  the  learned  critic's  words  they  never 
saw  come  true.  Six-and-thirty  years  after  Sterne's 
first  volume  had  been  published  Thomas  Car- 

1  Gray's  "  Works,"  ed.  1858,  ii.  185. 
*  Boswell's  "Life  of  Johnson,"  ed.  by  G.  B.  Hill,  ii.  173, 
449- 


42  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

lyle  was  born.  He  was  as  bad  as  the  under- 
graduates of  the  Cambridge  College.  "  My 
first  favourite  books,"  he  writes,  "had  been 
•  Hudibras  '  and  '  Tristram  Shandy.'  "  Sterne  he 
describes  "  as  our  last  specimen  of  humour, 
and  with  all  his  faults  our  best ;  our  finest 
if  not  our  strongest  ;  for  Yorick  and  Corporal 
Trim  and  Uncle  Toby  have  yet  no  brother  but 
in  Don  Quixote,  far  as  he  lies  above  them." 
Macaulay  was  no  better  than  Carlyle.  He  cele- 
brates "the  exquisite  skill  with  which  Sterne 
delineates  a  veteran  who  had  fought  at  the 
Boyne  and  at  Namur."  *  If  Dr.  Farmer  could  see 
nothing  in  "  Tristram  Shandy,"  a  far  greater  man 
could  see  nothing  in  Voltaire's  "  Candide."  "  I 
could  not  read  it  for  the  dulness,"  wrote  Charles 
Lamb.2 

Hume  wrote  of  John  Home's  play  of  "  Douglas," 
which  lives,  so  far  as  it  does  live,  somewhat 
ridiculously  in  the  line,  "My  name  is  Norval." 
Hume,  I  say,  wrote  of  this  play  :  "  I  am  persuaded 
it  will  be  esteemed  the  best,  and  by  French  critics, 
the  only  tragedy  of  our  language."  He  would 

1  Froude's  "  Life  of  Carlyle,"  part  i.,  vol.  i.  p.  396 ;  Car- 
lyle's  "  Miscellaneous  Essays,"  i.  13  ;  Macaulay's  "  History 
of  England,"  ed.  1873,  iii.  *t>9- 

8  Lamb's  "Letters,"  ed.  by  A.  Ainger,  i.  277. 


/.— SHAKESPEARE  AND  HOME.  43 

have  joined  in  the  cry  of  the  gods  of  the  gallery  of 
the  Edinburgh  theatre,  "Where's  Wully  Shake- 
speare noo  ?  "  Dedicating  to  the  author  an  edition 
of  his  Essays,  he  says :  "  You  possess  the  true 
theatric  genius  of  Shakespeare  and  Otway,  refined 
from  the  unhappy  barbarism  of  the  one,  and  licen- 
tiousness of  the  other  ?  "  In  the  Appendix  to  the 
reign  of  James  I.  in  his  "  History  of  England,"  he 
writes  of  Shakespeare  :  "  His  total  ignorance  of  all 
theatrical  art  and  conduct,  however  material  a 
defect,  yet  as  it  affects  the  spectator  rather  than 
the  reader,  we  can  more  easily  excuse,  than  that 
want  of  taste  which  often  prevails  in  his  pro- 
ductions, and  which  gives  way  only  by  intervals  to 
the  irradiations  of  genius." x 

Adam  Smith  was  not  inferior  to  his  friend  in 
perversity  of  taste.  He  regretted  that  in  comedy 
the  English  writers  had  not  followed  the  model  of 
the  French  school  in  the  use  of  rhyme.  It  is  to 
him  more  than  to  any  other  man  that  we  owe 
freedom  of  commerce.  It  was  he  who  struck  off 
the  fetters  which  cramped  industry  and  trade. 
But  great  as  is  our  debt  to  him,  we  can  hardly 
forgive  him  for  the  wish  that  Shakespeare's 
humour  had  been  taught  to  pace  in  trammels,  and 

1  See  notes  in  my  edition,  "  Letters  of  David  Hume 
to  William  Strahan,"  pp.  11-16. 


44  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

that  honest  Jack  Falstaff  and  Dogberry  had  never 
opened  their  mouths  except  in  rhyming  couplets. 
Racine's  "  Phaedra  "  he  looked  upon  as  "  perhaps 
the  finest  tragedy  that  is  extant  in  any  language."  x 
Let  me  not  forget,  however,  to  do  justice  to  the 
great  economist.  In  the  list  of  subscribers  to  the 
second  edition  of  Burns's  poems  his  name  is  entered 
for  four  copies. 

Even  Burns  himself  does  not  fall  short  of  his 
famous  countrymen  in  absurdity.  In  one  of  his 
prologues,  speaking  of  Scotland,  he  says  : 

"  Here  Douglas  forms  wild  Shakespeare  into  plan." 

As  we  read  these  extravagant  laudations  of  this 
new  dramatist  we  are  pleased  at  recalling  that 
there  was  one  great  writer  who  was  not  cheated 
into  mistaking  "this  farthing  candle  for  the 
northern  lights."  It  was  in  a  coffee-house  in  this 
very  city  of  Oxford  that  "Dr.  Johnson  called  to 
old  Mr.  Sheridan,  '  How  came  you,  sir,  to  give 
Home  a  gold  medal  for  writing  that  foolish  play  ? ' 
and  defied  him  to  show  ten  good  lines  in  it." 
Sir  Walter  Scott,  writing  little  more  than  sixty 
years  ago,  maintained  that "  Douglas  was  a  master- 
piece." He  added :  "  Even  that  does  not  stand 

1  Stewart's  "  Life  of  Adam  Smith,"  p.  71,  and  Smith's 
11  Theory  of  Moral  Sentiments,"  ed.  1801,  i.  255. 


L—GARRICK  AND  SHAKESPEARE,          45 

the  closet.  Its  merits  are  for  the  stage  ;  and  it  is 
certainly  one  of  the  best  acting  plays  going."  T  It 
must  be  many  a  day  since  it  has  been  represented, 
at  all  events  on  the  London  stage. 

Garrick,  it  might  be  thought,  would  have  had 
truer  taste  as  regards  Shakespeare,  "the  god  of 
his  idolatry,"  than  many  of  his  contemporaries. 
Yet  he  exulted  that  he  lived  long  enough  to 
rescue  Hamlet  "  from  all  the  rubbish  of  the  fifth 
act"  "  I  have,"  he  wrote,  a  few  months  before  his 
retirement,  "brought  'Hamlet'  forth  without  the 
gravedigger's  trick  and  the  fencing  match."  2 

1  Boswell's  "  Life  of  Jchnson,"  ii.  320  ;  v.  360. 

2  "  Garrick  Correspondence,"  ii.  126. 


LECTURE  11. 


LECTURE   II. 

IF  we  turn  to  an  earlier  century,  we  can  see, 
in  the  rise  of  what  is  called  Pindarism, 
how  even  men  of  great  genius  whose  youthful 
breeding  was  not  in  the  artificiality  of  the  age 
of  Queen  Anne,  and  of  the  first  two  Georges, 
but  in  one  of  the  noblest  ages  of  literature,  could, 
nevertheless,  be  depraved  in  taste.  Cowley, 
who  was  born  but  two  years  after  Shakespeare's 
death,  while  those  mighty  masters  of  prose,  the 
translators  of  the  great  English  Bible  were 
many  of  them  still  living,  looking  upon  the 
Pindaric  Odes  as  one  of  the  lost  inventions  of 
antiquity,  "  made  a  bold  and  vigorous  attempt  to 
recover  them."  There  can  be  no  question  that  for 
many  a  long  year  Cowley  had  far  more  readers 
than  Shakespeare  or  Milton.  He  was  the  founder 
of  a  new  style  of  composition  which  prevailed 
about  half  a  century,  and  even  then  was  slow  in 

4 


50  WRITERS  A  AD  READERS. 

dying  out.  "  Clarendon  represents  him  as  having 
taken  a  flight  beyond  all  that  went  before  him ; 
and  Milton  is  said  to  have  declared  that  the  three 
greatest  English  poets  were  Spenser,  Shakespeare, 
and  Cowley."1  He  was  the  darling  of  Dryden's 
youth.  Addison,  in  his  lines  on  "The  Greatest 
English  Poets,"  after  justly  censuring  him  as 

"O'er-run  with  wit,  and  lavish  of  his  thought;" 
who 

"  More  had  pleased  us,  had  he  pleased  us  less," 

goes  on  to  say  : 

"  Pardon,  great  poet,  that  I  dare  to  name 
The  unnumbered  beauties  of  thy  verse  with  blame." 

In  twenty-five  years,  between  1656  and  1681, 
seven  folio  editions  of  his  works  were  published. 
The  first  edition  of  Shakespeare  had  been  brought 
out  thirty-three  years  before  Cowley's  first ;  but  his 
fourth  not  till  four  years  after  Cowley's  seventh. 
The  "  Paradise  Lost,"  though  it  seems  among 
readers  to  have  been  superior  in  popularity  to 
Shakespeare,  was  inferior  to  Cowley,  for  of  it  in 
twenty-one  years  only  four  editions  were  required. 

1  Johnson's  "  Works,"  ed.  1825,  vii.  36,  49, 


II.— MIL  TON  AND  CO  WLE  Y.  5 1 

Milton  was  less  applauded  even  than  Waller. 
Well  does  Dr.  Warton  write :  "  The  noble  con- 
fidence and  strength  of  mind  in  Milton  is  not  in 
any  circumstance  more  visible  and  more  admirable 
than  his  writing  a  poem  in  a  style  and  manner 
that  he  was  sure  would  not  be  relished  or  regarded 
by  his  corrupt  contemporaries."  x 

"  Though  fallen  on  evil  days, 
On  evil  days  though  fallen  and  evil  tongues," 

he  yet  could  say  : 

"  Still  govern  thou  my  song, 
Urania,  and  fit  audience  find,  though  few." 

Cowley's  popularity  gradually  waned.  He  had 
been  dead  about  fourscore  years  when  Pope 
asked  : 

"Who  now  reads  Cowley?" 

while  a  few  years  later  we  find  Samuel  Richardson, 
the  novelist,  wondering  that  he  was  so  absolutely 
neglected.2  We  may  smile  at  the  false  taste  which 
placed  Cowley  before  Milton  and  both  Cowley  and 
Milton  before  Shakespeare.  Yet  had  we  been 
living  then,  unless  we  had  been  blest  with  a  singu- 

1  Warton's  "  Pope's  Works,"  vol.  i.  pp.  Iv.  286. 
*  Pope's  "  Imitations  of    Horace,"   epis.   ii.   i.    75,   and 
Richardson's  "  Correspondence,"  ii.  229. 


52  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

larly  piercing  judgment,  we  should  in  all  likelihood 
have  been  as  confident  in  our  admiration  of  the 
favourite  of  our  age  as  the  members  of  the 
Browning  Club  can  be  in  their  worship  of  Mr. 
Browning.  Let  me  read  to  you  one  of  Cowley's 
Pindaric  Odes  to  show  you  what  was  the  style  at 
which  this  great  poet  aimed  in  the  conviction,  as 
he  avowed,  that  "  it  was  the  highest  and  noblest 
kind  of  writing  in  verse."  r 

THE  PRAISE  OF  PINDAR. 

I. 

Pindar  is  imitable  by  none  ; 
The  Phnenix  Pindar  is  a  vast  species  alone. 
Who  e're  but  Daedalus  with  waxen  wings  could  fly 
And  neither  sink  too  low,  nor  soar  too  high  ? 

What  could  he  who  follow'd  claim, 
But  of  vain  boldness  the  unhappy  fame, 

And  by  his  fall  a  Sea  to  name  ? 

Pindars  unnavigable  Song 
Like  a  swoln  Flood  from  some  steep  Mountain  pours  along. 

The  Ocean  meets  with  such  a  Voice 
From  his  enlarged  Mouth,  as  drowns  the  Oceans  noise. 

II. 

So  Pindar  does  new  Words  and  Figures  roul 
Down  his  impetuous  Dithyrambique  Tyde, 

Which  in  no  Channel  deigns  t'  abide, 

Which  neither  Banks  nor  Dikes  controul. 

Whether  th'  Immortal  Gods  he  sings 

In  a  no  less  Immortal  strain, 


1  Johnson's  "Works,"  vii.  41. 


II.— A  PINDARIC  ODE.  53 

Or  the  great  Acts  of  God-descended  Kings, 
Who  in  his  Numbers  still  survive  and  Reign. 

Each  rich  embroidered  Line, 
Which  their  triumphant  Brows  around, 

By  his  sacred  Hand  is  bound, 
Does  all  their  starry  Diadems  outshine. 

ill. 

Whether  at  Pisa's  race  he  please 
To  carve  in  polisht  Verse  the  Conqu'erors  Images, 
Whether  the  Swift,  the  Skilful,  or  the  Strong, 
Be  crowned  in  his  Nimble,  Artful,  Vigorous  Song  : 
Whether  some  brave  young  mans  untimely  fate 
In  words  worth  Dying  for  he  celebrate, 

Such  mournful,  and  such  pleasing  words, 
As  joy  to  his  Mothers  and  his  Mistress  grief  affords  : 

He  bids  him  live  and  Grow  in  fame, 

Among  the  Stars  he  sticks  his  Name  : 
The  Grave  can  but  the  Dross  of  him  devour, 
So  small  is  Deaths,  so  great  the  Poets  power. 

IV. 
Lo,  how  th'  obsequious  Wind,  and  swelling  Air 

The  Theban  Swan  does  upwards  bear 
Into  the  walks  of  Clouds,  where  he  does  play, 
And  with  extended  Wings  opens  his  liquid  way. 

Whilst  alas,  my  tim'erous  Muse 

Unambitious  tracks  pursues  ; 

Does  with  weak  unballast  wings, 

About  the  Mossy  Brooks  and  Springs, 

About  the  Trees  new-blossom'd  Heads, 

About  the  Gardens  painted  Beds, 

About  the  Fields  and  flowry  Meads, 

And  all  inferiour  beauteous  things 
Like  the  laborious  Bee, 

For  little  drops  of  Honey  flee, 
And  there  with  Humble  Sweets  contents  her  Industrie. 


54  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

Strained  and  unnatural  though  this  Ode  is, 
nevertheless  it  has  great  vigour  of  thought  and 
some  beautiful  lines.  It  contains  one  noble 
couplet,  or  at  least  one  noble  half  line : — 

"Whether  some  brave  young  man's  untimely  fate 
In  words  worth  dying  for  he  celebrate." 

If  Cowley's  thoughts  are  "most  fantastic  and  out 
of  the  way,"  they  are  nevertheless  expressed  "  in 
the  most  pure  and  genuine  mother  English."  J 

How  it  came  to  pass  that  "  Pindarism,"  our 
"  Pindaric  infatuation,"  "  our  Pindaric  madness," 
"the  Pindaric  folly,"  as  Johnson  justly  styled  it, 
became  so  popular  that  great  critic  has  clearly 
pointed  out.  "  This  lax  and  lawless  versification," 
he  says,  "so  much  concealed  the  deficiencies  of 
the  barren  and  flattered  the  laziness  of  the  idle, 
that  it  immediately  overspread  our  books  of  poetry ; 
all  the  boys  and  girls  caught  the  pleasing  fashion, 
and  they  that  could  do  nothing  else  could  write 
like  Pindar."  2  This  sentence  with  the  change  of 
one  or  two  words  is  applicable  to  every  age.  It  is 
not  only  laxness  and  lawlessness  that  are  caught ; 
smoothness  and  regularity  have  their  day  too.  All 
the  boys  and  girls  of  every  generation  catch  the 

1  Coleridge's  "  Biographia  Literaria,"  p.  II. 
*  Johnson's  "  Works,"  vii.  41. 


II.— FASHIONS  IN  WRITING.  55 

pleasing  fashion,  and  they  who  can  do  nothing 
else  can  write  like  Pindar,  or  Pope,  or  Johnson,  or 
Byron,  or  Carlyle,  or  Macaulay,  or  Browning,  or 
the  modern  art  critics,  or  the  female  novelists,  or 
the  gentlemen  whose  easy  task  it  is  to  fill  a 
column  and  a  third  of  the  newspaper  with  what 
is  called  descriptive  writing.  What  we  can  do 
easily  and  successfully  that  we  admire  and  uphold  ; 
our  self-interest  gets  hopelessly  entangled  with  our 
judgment,  and  we  set  up  as  critics  and  prophets 
when  we  are  at  best  self-deceived  advocates.  Even 
if  we  do  not  write  we  get  scarcely  less  interested  in 
the  cause  as  readers.  It  is  our  taste,  we  feel  that 
is  on  its  trial  quite  as  much  as  the  taste  of  the 
writer  whom  we  have  set  up  as  an  idol.  "  What  ?  " 
asks  Pope,  "  must  be  the  priest,  where  a  monkey  is 
the  god  ? "  What,  we  ask,  must  be  our  state,  if 
our  great  writer  can  be  shown  to  be  a  mere 
pretentious  piece  of  wordiness  ?  It  is  no  doubt 
true,  as  Coleridge  has  pointed  out,  in  his  curious 
history  of  his  own  mental  growth,  that "  no  models 
of  past  times,  however  perfect,  can  have  the  same 
vivid  effect  on  the  youthful  mind  as  the  productions 
of  contemporary  genius.  .  .  .  The  great  works  of 
past  ages,"  he  continues,  "  seem  to  a  young  man 
things  of  another  race,  in  respect  to  which  his 
faculties  must  remain  passive  and  submiss,  even 


56  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

as  to  the  stars  and  mountains.  But  the  writings 
of  a  contemporary,  perhaps  not  many  years  older 
than  himself,  surrounded  by  the  same  circum- 
stances and  disciplined  by  the  same  manners, 
possess  a  reality  for  him,  and  inspire  an  actual 
friendship  as  of  a  man  for  a  man.  His  very  admi- 
ration is  the  wind  which  fans  and  feeds  his  hope. 
The  poems  themselves  assume  the  properties  of 
flesh  and  blood.  To  recite,  to  extol,  to  contend 
for  them  is  but  the  payment  of  a  debt  due  to  one 
who  exists  to  receive  it." 

The  wind  which  fanned  and  fed  Coleridge's  hope 
and  the  hope  of  Southey  and  Wordsworth,  too, 
was  their  admiration  of  a  poet  but  a  few  years 
their  senior,  William  Lisle  Bowles.  His  life  was 
prolonged  to  a  great  age.  He  outlived  two  of  his 
three  disciples  and  his  own  fame.  The  gentle  old 
man  was  in  no  illusion  about  himself.  "  Many 
years,"  he  wrote,  "  after  my  gray  head  shall  have 
been  laid  at  rest,  some  of  those  who  may  have  seen 
those  poems  of  which  Coleridge  spoke  in  the  days 
of  his  earliest  song  so  enthusiastically  may  inquire, 
'  Who  was  W.  L.  Bowles  ? '  "  J  It  was  this  minor 
poet,  then,  who  gave  the  first  impulse  to  two  men  of 
great  genius;  but  had  they  read  Bowles  alone,  or  the 

*  Coleridge's  "  Biographia  Literaria,"  p.  5  ;  Knight's 
"  Cyclopaedia  of  Biography,"  i.  875. 


II.— COLERIDGE'S  SCHOOLMASTER.          57 

school  of  Bowles,  neither  Coleridge  nor  Wordsworth 
would  sit  where  they  now  sit  on  the  serene  heights. 
It  was  by  the  great  poets  of  all  ages  that  their 
thoughts  had  been  nourished  and  their  minds  dis- 
ciplined. Coleridge  speaks  with  gratitude  of  "  the 
very  sensible,  though  very  severe"  Master  of  Christ's 
Hospital,  by  whom  his  youthful  taste  had  been 
formed.  "  He  early  moulded  it  to  the  preference  of 
Demosthenes  to  Cicero,  of  Homer  and  Theocritus 
to  Virgil,  and  again  of  Virgil  to  Ovid.  =  .  .  He  made 
us  read  Shakespeare  and  Milton  as  lessons.  .  . 
In  the  truly  great  poets,  he  would  say,  there  is  a 
reason  assignable  not  only  for  every  word,  but  for 
the  position  of  every  word.  In  our  own  English 
compositions  he  showed  no  mercy  to  phrase,  meta- 
phor, or  image  unsupported  by  a  sound  sense,  or 
where  the  same  sense  might  have  been  conveyed 
with  equal  force  and  dignity  in  plainer  words. 
Lute,  harp,  lyre,  muse,  muses  and  inspirations, 
Pegasus,  Parnassus,  and  Hippocrene  were  all  an 
abomination  to  him.  I  fancy  I  can  almost  hear 
him  now  exclaiming,  '  Harp  ?  Harp  ?  Lyre  ? 
Pen  and  ink,  boy,  you  mean.  Muse,  boy,  muse  ? 
Your  nurse's  daughter  you  mean.  Pierian  spring? 
Oh,  aye !  the  cloister-pump,  I  suppose.' "  *  To  a 
mind  thus  disciplined  the  excessive  worship  of 
1  "Biographia  Literaria,"  p.  3. 


58  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

contemporary  writers  could  do  little  harm,  for  it 
was  certain  not  to  last  long.  In  Wordsworth  it 
did,  I  suspect,  more  mischief.  His  school  training 
had  been  less  severe.  Had  he  studied  more 
thoroughly  the  merits  of  a  school  of  poets  whom 
he  disliked,  he  might  have  avoided  some  of  those 
faults  of  feebleness  and  tediousness  which  rouse  the 
contempt  of  his  enemies  and  the  anger  of  those 
who  love  him. 

But  to  return  to  the  more  immediate  subject  of 
my  lectures — the  judgments  passed  on  books  by 
the  different  generations.  Bacon  was  born  three 
years  before  Shakespeare,  and  outlived  him  by  ten. 
A  great  part  of  their  lives  they  dwelt  in  the  same 
town ;  they  must  have  jostled  each  other  in  the 
street  Yet  the  philosopher,  it  has  been  pointed 
out,  "in  his  multifarious  writings  nowhere  either 
quotes  Shakespeare  or  alludes  to  him."1  He  is 
almost  worse  than  the  worthy  citizen  who  had  lived 
in  Paris  during  the  whole  of  the  Reign  of  Terror 
without  discovering  that  anything  unusual  had 
been  going  on.  If  there  were  any  mind  which 
was  capable  of  at  once  discovering  Shakespeare's 
transcendent  greatness,  surely  it  should  have  been 
his  who  is  only  second  to  him  among  our  poets, 
and  who  was  not  separated  from  him  by  any  gulf 
1  Wordsworth's  "  Works,"  vi.  363. 


II.— MILTON  AS  A  CRITIC.  59 

of  time.  Milton  was  a  boy  of  seven  when  Shake- 
speare died ;  he  entered  Cambridge  only  about  a 
year  after  the  first  folio  edition  of  the  collected 
plays  was  published.  Yet  his  judgment  seems  to 
be  little  sounder  than  David  Hume's  when,  in  the 
preface  to  his  "  Samson  Agonistcs,"  he  speaks  of 
yEschylus,  Sophocles,  and  Euripides  as  "  the  three 
tragic  poets,  unequalled  yet  by  any,  and  the  best 
rule  to  all  who  endeavour  to  write  tragedy,"  and 
when  he  "  vindicates  tragedy  from  the  small  esteem, 
or  rather  infamy,  which,  in  the  account  of  many,  it 
undergoes  at  this  day  with  other  common  inter- 
ludes ;  happening  through  the  poet's  error  of 
intermixing  comic  stuff  with  tragic  sadness  and 
gravity,  or  introducing  trivial  and  vulgar  persons, 
which  by  all  judicious  hath  been  counted  absurd, 
and  brought  in  without  discretion,  corruptly  to 
gratify  the  people." 

This  "comic  stuff''  was,  I  suppose,  much  the 
same  as  that  which  Garrick  calls  "  the  rubbish  of 
the  fifth  act  of  '  Hamlet ;'"  the  buffoonery  with 
which  Voltaire  reproached  Shakespeare ;  those 
admirable  scenes  in  which  the  genius  of  the 
mighty  poet  interwove  in  the  web  of  life  the 
bright  colours  with  the  sad,  and  showed  us  man, 
not  as  the  unities  would  have  him,  but  as  Nature 
has  made  him. 


6o  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

Dryden,  I  must  admit,  recognised  to  the  full 
that  genius  which  Milton  had  seen  only  in  part. 
In  his  "  Essay  of  Dramatick  Poesie,"  written  in 
the  year  1668,  three  years  earlier  than  "  Samson 
Agonistes,"  he  had  said :  "  Shakespeare  was  the 
man  who  of  all  modern,  and  perhaps  ancient, 
poets,  had  the  largest  and  most  comprehensive 
soul.  All  the  images  of  nature  were  still  present 
to  him,  and  he  drew  them,  not  laboriously,  but 
luckily  :  when  he  describes  anything,  you  more 
than  see  it,  you  feel  it  too.  Those  who  accuse 
him  to  have  wanted  learning  give  him  the  greater 
commendation  ;  he  was  naturally  learned ;  he 
needed  not  the  spectacles  of  books  to  read 
nature ;  he  looked  inwards  and  found  her  there. 
I  cannot  say  he  is  everywhere  alike  ;  were  he  so, 
I  should  do  him  injury  to  compare  him  with  the 
greatest  of  mankind.  He  is  many  times  flat, 
insipid  ;  his  comic  wit  degenerating  into  clenches,1 
his  serious  swelling  into  bombast.  But  he  is 
always  great  when  some  great  occasion  is  pre- 
sented to  him.  No  man  can  say  he  ever  had 
a  fit  subject  for  his  wit,  and  did  not  then  raise 
himself  as  high  above  the  rest  of  poets. 

1  "  Clinch :  a  pun  ;  an  ambiguity "  (Johnson's  Dic- 
tionary). 


II.— SHAKESPEARE  AND  DRYDEN.          61 

'  Quantum  lenta  solent  inter  viburna  cupressi.'  "  * 

In  his  lines  to  Sir  Godfrey  Kneller,  who,  it  is  con- 
jectured, had  sent  him  a  copy  of  the  Chandos 
portrait  of  Shakespeare,  Dryden  says  : 

'  Shakespeare,  thy  gift,  I  place  before  my  sight, 
With  awe  I  ask  his  blessing  ere  I  write, 
With  reverence  look  on  his  majestic  face ; 
Proud  to  be  less,  but  of  his  god-like  race." 

But  even  Dryden,  with  all  his  admiration  for 
Shakespeare,  ventured  to  lay  an  impious  hand  on 
"  The  Tempest,"  and  to  re-write  it  for  the  stage. 
He  must  have  known  how  shameful  was  his  usage  ; 
yet  we  may  perhaps  forgive  him  for  one  fine 
passage.  He  makes  Prospero  say  : 

"  On  what  strange  grounds  we  build  our  hopes  and  fears  : 
Man's  life  is  all  a  mist,  and  in  the  dark 
Our  fortunes  meet  us." 

In  spite  of  the  weight  which,  by  his  preface,  he 
threw  into  the  scale,  the  balance  swung  against 
Shakespeare  till  time  and  the  world's  long  thinking 
set  it  right.  In  Drvden's  time,  he  tells  us,  two  of  the 
plays  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  were  acted  for 
one  of  Shakespeare's.  In  the  two  theatres  of  the 
Restoration  only  three  of  his  plays  were  revived  in 
the  one,  and  about  five  in  the  other.  For  nearly 
1  "  As  towers  the  cypress  tall  above  the  lowly  shrubs." 


62  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

eighty  years  "  Romeo  and  Juliet "  had  lain 
neglected  by  the  actors,  when  Garrick  brought  it 
out  at  the  end  of  1748.  On  March  I,  1662,  Pepys 
had  gone  in  a  coach  with  his  wife  to  see  it,  and 
had  recorded  in  his  diary  :  "  It  is  a  play  of  itself 
the  worst  that  ever  I  heard,  and  the  worst  acted 
that  ever  I  saw  these  people  do." J  But  even 
Garrick,  as  I  have  shown,  was  little  sensible  of 
the  vast  genius  of  Shakespeare,  and  as  he  had 
"cleared  'Hamlet'  from  rubbish,"  so  now  he 
cobbled  that  beautiful  tragedy,  "  The  Story  of 
Juliet  and  her  Romeo."  He  saw,  as  we  are  told 
by  the  critic  and  play-writer,  Arthur  Murphy,  that 
the  catastrophe  might  be  made  more  affecting. 
He  therefore  altered  the  fifth  act  "  and  rendered 
the  catastrophe  (I  again  quote  Murphy)  the 
most  affecting  in  the  whole  compass  of  the 
drama."  2 

It  is  an  undoubted  fact,  nevertheless,  that  Garrick 
did  much  to  render  Shakespeare  more  widely 
known.  In  the  twenty  years  before  he  undertook 
the  management  of  Drury  Lane  "not  more  than 
eight  or  nine  of  Shakespeare's  comedies  and  trage- 

1  "  An  Essay  of  Dramatick  Poesie ; "  Dryden's  "  Plays," 
ed.  1701,  i.  20  ;  Davies's  "  Dramatic  Miscellanies,"  iii.  161  ; 
Davies's  "Life  of  Garrick,"  i.  124;  Pepys's  "  Diary,"  ed. 
1851,  i.  330. 

'  Murphy's  "Life  of  Garrick,"  p.  100. 


IL—TPIE  SHAKESPEARIAN  REVIVAL.       63 

dies  were  in  possession  of  the  stage  ; "  while  he  used 
to  have  played  every  year  seventeen  or  eighteen  at 
his  theatre.1  I  find  that  in  five  weeks  of  the 
autumn  of  1754  there  were  at  the  two  theatres  of 
Drury  Lane  and  Covent  Garden  nineteen  nights 
on  which  Shakespeare  was  acted,  and  that  nine 
of  his  plays  were  represented — "Hamlet,"  "Mac- 
beth," "Othello/'  "Romeo  and  Juliet,"  "  Corio- 
lanus,"  "Richard  III.,"  "Henry  VIII.,"  "The 
Merchant  of  Venice,"  and  "Much  Ado  About 
Nothing."  We  have  the  impudence  to  despise 
the  eighteenth  century  for  its  ignorance  and 
neglect  of  real  poetry.  London  at  that  time  had 
but  two  theatres.  In  the  sixty  representations 
which  were  given  in  these  five  weeks  nineteen  were 
of  plays  of  Shakespeare.  Nor  was  there  anything 
unusual  in  this.  Two  years  earlier  in  fifty-seven 
nights  his  plays  were  acted  twenty  times.1  The 
evil  days  had  not  been  yet  invented  of  splendid 
and  costly  scenery  with  long  runs,  which  alone 
could  pa)r  for  the  extravagance  of  the  outlay. 

It  was  not  only  or  even  chiefly  to  Garrick  that 
was  due  this  Shakespearian  revival.  The  great  actor 
was  following  the  tide,  and  not  heading  it.  The 
ladies,  be  it  said  to  their  honour,  some  time  before 

1  Davies's  "  Life  of  Garrick,"  i.  120. 

*  Gentkmaris  Magazine,  1752,  p.  479  ;  1754,  p.  533. 


64  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

his  first  appearance  on  the  stage,  had  formed  them- 
selves into  a  Shakespeare  Club,  and  bespoke  every 
week  some  favourite  play  of  our  immortal  poet.1 
Edition  after  edition  of  his  works  had  appeared. 
Rowe  had  been  followed  by  Pope,  and  Pope  by 
Theobald,  to  be  soon  followed  in  turn  by  Hanmer, 
Warburton,  and  Johnson.  The  eighteenth  century 
had  been  satisfied  with  four  editions  of  his  collected 
plays.  In  the  first  hundred  years  after  his  death 
there  were  but  six  ;  in  the  next  fifty  there  were 
three-and-twenty. 

The  reaction  from  the  evil  days  of  the  Resto- 
ration had  long  set  in.  Even  Colley  Gibber,  who 
was  old  enough  to  have  borne  arms  on  the  side  of 
the  Prince  of  Orange  in  the  glorious  Revolution, 
writing  of  our  great  poet,  says :  "  A  hundred 
years  are  wasted,  and  another  silent  century 
well  advanced  ;  and  yet  what  unborn  age  shall 
say  Shakespeare  has  his  equal  ? "  The  Earl 
of  Shaftesbury,  in  the  reign  of  Anne — that 
age  which  is  reproached  for  its  artificiality — 
describes  "  Hamlet  "  as  the  play  "  which  appears 
to  have  most  affected  English  hearts."3  Never- 
theless, in  the  very  year  in  which  this  was  written 

1  Davies's  "  Life  of  Garrick,"  p.  20. 

*  Gibber's  "Autobiography,"  ed.  1826,  p.  58  ;  "  Character- 
istics," ed.  1714,  i.  275. 


I  I. -THE  "  TATLER'S"  IGNORANCE.         65 

a  curious  instance  is  to  be  found  of  the  un- 
familiarity  of  the  polite  reader  with  Shakespeare's 
less  important  works.  In  the  Tatler  for  Sep- 
tember 30,  1710,  a  story  is  told  in  illustration  of 
"  the  proverbial  expression  of  taking  a  woman 
doivn  in  her  wedding  shoes,  if  you  would  bring  her 
to  reason.  An  early  behaviour  of  this  sort,"  con- 
tinues the  writer,  "  had  a  very  remarkable  good 
effect  in  a  family  wherein  I  was  several  years  an 
intimate  acquaintance."  He  goes  on  to  tell  the 
story  of  the  youngest  daughter  of  a  gentleman  in 
Lincolnshire,  which  Shakespeare  had  long  before 
told  of  Signer  Baptista,  of  Padua,  the  father  of 
"the  curst  shrew"  whom  Petruchio  tamed.  In 
spite  of  this  curious  instance  of  gross  ignorance,  it 
is  abundantly  clear  that  Shakespeare  in  his  great 
plays,  even  early  in  the  eighteenth  century,  had 
laid  hold  of  the  hearts  of  the  people,  or,  at 
all  events,  of  the  hearts  of  the  playgoers.  Pope, 
who  as  a  poet  is  as  widely  removed  from  him  as 
the  north  pole  is  from  the  south,  speaks  of  him  as 
"justly  and  universally  elevated  above  all  other 
dramatic  writers.  His  poetry,"  he  adds,  "  was 
inspiration  indeed  ;  he  is  not  so  much  an  imitator 
as  an  instrument  of  nature ;  and  'tis  not  so  just  to 
say  that  he  speaks  from  her  as  that  she  speaks 
through  him."  Richardson,  who,  like  Pope,  was 

5 


66  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

born  in  the  seventeenth  century,  makes  his 
heroine,  Miss  Byron,  on  her  arrival  in  London, 
write  to  her  friend  :  "  If  you  find  that  I  prefer  the 
opera  itself — well  as  I  love  music — to  a  good  play 
of  our  favourite  Shakespeare,  then,  my  Lucy,  let 
your  heart  ache  for  your  Harriet."  Horace  Wai- 
pole,  who,  as  a  boy  of  ten,  had  knelt  down  and 
kissed  the  hand  of  George  I.,  and  who  is  often 
looked  upon  as  a  bundle  of  clever  affectations,  in 
one  of  his  "  Letters "  speaks  of  "  all  my  enthu- 
siasm for  Shakespeare."  Gibbon,  who  was  born 
early  in  the  reign  of  George  II.,  and  who  entered 
Magdalen  College  139  years  ago,  recounts  how 
at  Lausanne,  on  the  Lake  of  Geneva,  where  he 
spent  nearly  five  of  the  years  of  his  youth,  he  was 
allowed  to  attend  the  little  theatre  which  Voltaire 
had  set  up  there  for  the  performance  of  his  own 
plays.  "  The  habits  of  pleasure,"  he  continues, 
"  fortified  my  taste  for  the  French  theatre,  and 
that  taste  has  perhaps  abated  my  idolatry  for  the 
gigantic  genius  of  Shakespeare,  which  is  inculcated 
from  our  infancy  as  the  first  duty  of  an  English- 
man." This  idolatry  Mrs.  Barbauld  thus  mentions 
in  one  of  her  letters  written  in  1776:  "I  am  of 
your  opinion  that  we  idolize  Shakespeare  rather 
too  much  for  a  Christian  country." x 

1  Pope's  "  Preface  to  Shakespeare  "  ;  "  Sir  Charles  Grandi- 


IL— GERMAN  PRETENSIONS.  67 

It  had  been  by  those  who  frequented  the  theatres 
that  Shakespeare  had  been  first  worshipped.  The 
fewness  of  the  editions  of  his  works  that  were 
printed  in  the  first  hundred  years  after  his  death 
is  a  convincing  proof  that  he  had  no  great  popu- 
larity among  readers.  Early  in  the  eighteenth 
century,  as  I  have  shown,  a  great  change  had  set 
in.  He  was  to  pass  from  the  stage  to  the  library, 
and  from  the  library  to  the  parlour. 

I  would  turn  aside  to  attack  for  a  moment  the 
foolish  vanity  of  some  of  the  Germans,  who  impu- 
dently assert  that  their  nation  was  the  first  to 
discover  Shakespeare's  genius,  and  that  they 
showed  us  Englishmen  how  vast  was  the  treasure 
which,  as  it  were,  had  lain  hidden  in  our  soil,  just 
as  strangers  from  across  the  sea  were  the  first  to 
discover  the  gold  reefs  which  had  escaped  the 
notice  of  the  stupid  savages  of  Australia.  When 
as  yet  there  was  scarcely  an  Englishman  who 
could  read  a  line  of  German,  except  one  or  two 
courtiers  who  had  learnt  it  in  the  hope  of  winning 
the  favour  of  George  I.,  and  one  religious  enthusiast 
who  had  resolved  to  study  in  the  original  the  works 
of  the  mystic  shoemaker,  Jacob  Behmen,  two 

son,"  ed.  1754,  i.  24  ;  Walpole's  "  Letters,"  ix.  124  ;  Gibbon's 
"  Miscellaneous  Works,"  i.  104  ;  Mrs.  Barbauld's  "Works," 
ii.  14. 


68  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

Englishmen,  who  almost  in  succession  were  at  the 
head  of  the  world  of  letters,  as  no  two  Englishmen 
have  ever  been  since  their  time — Alexander  Pope 
and  Samuel  Johnson — brought  out  editions  of  his 
works.  As  a  rival  in  their  labours,  and  coming 
between  them  in  point  of  time,  we  find  War- 
burton,  whose  name,  if  it  is  now  well-nigh  for- 
gotten, was  amongst  the  foremost  in  the  middle  of 
last  century.  It  was  Lessing,  says  Carlyle,  who 
by  "  his  '  Dramaturgic '  first  exploded  the  pre- 
tensions of  the  French  Theatre,  and  with  irresis- 
tible conviction  made  Shakespeare  known  to  his 
countrymen."  But  the  "  Dramaturgic  "  was  not 
published  till  1767-8,  just  one  hundred  years  after 
Dryden  had  declared  that  "  Shakespeare  was  the 
man  who  of  all  modern  and  perhaps  ancient  poets 
had  the  largest  and  most  comprehensive  soul."  It 
may  indeed  be  the  case  that  Lessing,  as  Coleridge 
maintains,  "  first  proved  to  all  thinking  men — even 
to  Shakespeare's  own  countrymen — the  true  nature 
of  his  apparent  irregularities" — those  deviations 
from  the  models  of  the  Greek  dramas  which  Cor- 
neille  and  Racine  had  so  servilely  followed.1  But 
Lessing  was  only  carrying  further  what  Dryden 
and  Johnson  had  begun.  Dryden,  in  the  preface 

1  Carlyle's   "  Miscellaneous  Essays,"   i.  37 ;    Coleridge's 
,'  Biographia  Literaria,"  p.  275. 


II.— DR  YDEN  AND  JOHNSON.  69 

to  that  fine  play,  "  All  for  Love ;  or  the  World 
Well  Lost,"  so  early  as  the  year  1678,  had  attacked 
those  critics  "  who  wholly  form  their  judgments  by 
the  French  poets.  For  my  part,"  he  says,  "  I 
desire  to  be  tried  by  the  laws  of  my  own  country  ; 
for  it  seems  unjust  to  me  that  the  French  should 
prcsciibe  here  till  they  have  conquered.  .  .  .  Their 
heroes  are  the  most  civil  people  breathing,  but 
their  good-breeding  seldom  extends  to  a  word  of 
sense.  All  their  wit  is  in  their  ceremony  ;  they 
want  the  genius  which  animates  our  stage ;  and, 
therefore,  'tis  but  necessary,  when  they  cannot 
please,  that  they  should  take  care  not  to  offend. 
But  as  the  civillest  man  in  the  company  is  com- 
monly the  dullest,  so  these  authors,  while  they  are 
afraid  to  make  you  laugh  or  cry,  out  of  pure  good 
manners  make  you  sleep."  Johnson,  moreover,  two 
or  three  years  before  Lessing  wrote,  had  ridiculed 
the  charge  brought  against  Shakespeare  that  he 
had  neglected  "  those  laws  which  have  been  insti- 
tuted and  established  by  the  joint  authority  of 
poets  and  of  critics.  To  the  unities  of  time  and 
place,"  he  continues,  "  he  has  shown  no  regard  ; 
and  perhaps  a  nearer  view  of  the  principles  on 
which  they  stand  will  diminish  their  value,  and 
withdraw  from  them  the  veneration  which,  from 
the  time  of  Corneille,  they  have  very  generally 


70  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

received,  by  discovering  that  they  have  given 
more  trouble  to  the  poet  than  pleasure  to  the 
auditor." 

Addison  also  in  an  Essay  which  he  wrote  when 
Johnson  was  a  little  child,  says :  "  Our  inimitable 
Shakespeare  is  a  stumbling-block  to  the  whole 
tribe  of  these  rigid  critics.  Who  would  not  rather 
read  one  of  his  plays,  where  there  is  not  a  single 
rule  of  the  stage  observed,  than  any  production  of 
a  modern  critic  where  there  is  not  one  of  them 
violated  ?  "  Yet  it  was  Addison's  own  play  which 
led  Voltaire  to  "express  his  wonder  that  Shake- 
speare's extravagancies  are  endured  by  a  nation 
which  has  seen  the  tragedy  of  Cato."  J  Lessing's 
criticism  may  have  gone  far  deeper  than  Dryden's 
and  Johnson's,  but  it  was  by  English  writers  that 
Shakespeare's  defence  was  first  undertaken,  and  it 
was  by  the  English  people  that  the  transcendency 
of  his  genius  was  first  maintained.  How  ignorant 
we  were  of  German,  even  at  the  close  of  last 
century,  is  shown  in  the  preface  to  the  translation 
of  "  The  Sorrows  of  Werter,"  published  in  London 
in  1794.  By  that  time  Goethe  was  thirty-five 
years  old,  and  had  written  four  of  his  plays.  The 
translator,  speaking  of  him  as  "  Mr.  Goethe," 

1  Johnson's  "Works,"  v.   118,   126;    The  Spectator,  No. 
592. 


II.- GEORGE  THE  THIRD.  7' 

describes  him  in  a  footnote  as  "  Doctor  of  Civil 
Law  and  author  of  some  dramatic  pieces  which 
are  much  esteemed." 

There  was,  indeed,  one  famous  critic  who,  though 
he  gloried  in  being  born  a  Briton,  was  a  German 
by  origin,  and  a  master  of  the  German  tongue — 
His  Majesty,  King  George  III.  His  criticism  on 
Shakespeare,  though  it  was  not  published  till  after 
his  death,  is,  I  suppose,  one  of  the  earliest  made 
by  any  one  who  was  skilled  in  both  languages. 
Justice  to  the  Germans  will  not  allow  me  to  pass 
it  over  in  silence.  "  Was  there  ever,"  he  cried  to 
Miss  Burney,  "  such  stuff  as  great  part  of  Shake- 
speare ?  Only  one  must  not  say  so!  But  what 
think  you?  What?  Is  there  not  sad  stuff? 
What  ?  What  ?  " 

"  Yes,  indeed,  I  think  so,  sir,  though  mixed  with 
such  excellencies  that — " 

"  Oh  !  "  cried  he.  laughing  good-humouredly,  "  I 
know  it  is  not  to  be  said  !  but  it's  true.  Only  it's 
Shakespeare,  and  nobody  dare  abuse  him."  * 

There  was  a  far  greater  man  than  George  III. — 
a  man  neglected  by  him  when  he  set  up  as  the 
patron  of  literature—  who  seems  to  have  been 
insensible  to  Shakespeare's  genius.  There  is  a 
touch  of  scorn  when  Oliver  Goldsmith  makes 
*  Madame  D'Arblay's  "  Diary,"  ii.  398. 


72  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

"the  whole  conversation  run,"  in  the  Vicar  of 
Wakefield's  parlour,  "upon  high  life  and  high- 
lived  company,  with  pictures,  taste,  Shakespeare, 
and  the  musical  glasses."  In  his  "  Enquiry  into 
the  Present  State  of  Polite  Learning  "  his  contempt 
is  still  more  openly  shown.  There,  speaking  no 
doubt  of  the  plays  which  Garrick  was  bringing 
back  to  the  stage  he  says :  "  Old  pieces  are 
revived,  and  scarcely  any  new  ones  admitted  .  .  . 
the  public  are  again  obliged  to  ruminate  over 
those  hashes  of  absurdity,  which  were  disgusting 
to  our  ancestors  even  in  an  age  of  ignorance.  .  .  . 
We  seem  to  be  pretty  much  in  the  situation  of 
travellers  at  a  Scotch  inn ;  vile  entertainment  is 
served  up,  complained  of,  and  sent  down ;  up 
comes  worse  and  that  also  is  changed,  and  every 
change  makes  our  wretched  cheer  more  unsavoury. 
What  must  be  done?  Only  sit  down  contented, 
cry  up  all  that  comes  before  us,  and  admire  even 
the  absurdities  of  Shakespeare.  ...  In  fact,  the 
revival  of  those  pieces  of  forced  humour,  far- 
fetched conceit,  and  unnatural  hyperbole  which 
have  been  ascribed  to  Shakespeare  is  rather 
gibbeting  than  raising  a  statue  to  his  memory,"  J 
It  may,  however,  be  the  case  that  this  censure  was 

•  K  The  Vicar  of  Wakefield,"  chap.  x.  ;  "  An  Enquiry," 
chap.  xii. 


II.-O LIVER  GOLDSMITH.  73 

due  not  altogether  to  bad  taste  and  imperfect 
sympathies.  Goldsmith  unhappily,  with  all  his 
fine  qualities,  was  a  man  too  much  subject  to  envy. 
He  was,  perhaps,  jealous  of  the  homage  paid  to 
the  mighty  dead.  He  owned  indeed  to  Horace 
Walpole  that  he  envied  Shakespeare.  "  Fame," 
we  are  told,  "  he  considered  as  one  great  parcel, 
to  the  whole  of  which  he  laid  claim.  Whoever 
partook  of  any  part  of  it,  whether  dancer,  singer, 
sleight-of-hand  man,  or  tumbler,  deprived  him  of 
his  right."  He  too  had  suffered  from  neglect. 
"  Whenever  I  write  anything,"  he  once  said,  "  the 
public  make  a  point  to  know  nothing  about  it." 
One  of  his  comedies  was  refused  by  Garrick  and 
the  other  by  Colman.1 

In  the  praise  that  was  so  liberally  bestowed, 
and  bestowed  without  ridicule,  on  Mrs.  Montagu's 
silly  essay,  we  see  that  there  were  others  besides 
George  III.  and  Oliver  Goldsmith  by  whom 
Shakespeare's  full  greatness  was  not  recognized. 
She  did  not  hesitate  to  say  at  one  time  that  "  she 
trembled  for  Shakespeare,"  and  at  another  time 
that  "she  was  a  little  jealous  for  poor  Shakespeare." 
The  admiration  excited  by  her  dull  and  pompous 

1  Walpole's  "  Letters,"  vi.  379 ;  Northcote's  "  Life  of 
Reynolds,"  i.  248  ;  BoswelPs  "  Life  of  Johnson,"  iii.  252, 
320. 


74  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

Essay  might  raise  not  only  our  surprise  but  even 
our  contempt  for  the  understanding  of  our  fore- 
fathers, had  we  not  seen  the  stir  which  has  been 
made  by  the  silly  fellow  from  over  the  Atlantic 
with  his  nonsense  about  Bacon.  Mrs.  Montagu, 
let  us  do  her  the  justice  to  admit,  did  pack  her 
nonsense  into  a  book  so  small  that  it  can  be  read 
at  a  sitting ;  while  he  has  swollen  his  to  a  bulk 
that  might  with  great  advantage  be  used  in  any 
well-regulated  prison  as  a  severe  form  of  punish- 
ment in  the  case  of  all  prisoners  of  intelligence. 

In  spite,  however,  of  the  evidence  that  is  afforded 
by  George  III.,  Goldsmith,  and  the  patronage  of 
Mrs.  Montagu,  it  is  certain  that  even  somewhat 
early  in  last  century  Shakespeare's  fame  over- 
shadowed all  other  English  writers.  Yet  it  had 
taken  the  dull  old  world  the  best  part  of  a  hundred 
years  before  it  discovered  his  genius  in  all  its 
breadth  and  length  and  depth  and  height.  Had 
this  lecture  been  given  in  the  days  of  the  Restora- 
tion or  even  a  little  later,  it  is  quite  possible  that 
his  name  and  works  might  have  been  passed  over 
in  silence,  and  that  the  omission  might  have  been 
scarcely  noticed  by  the  audience.  In  1690,  Sir 
Thomas  Blount  published  a  work  in  which  he  had 
collected  the  judgments  passed  by  learned  men  on 
the  most  famous  writers  of  all  ages.  Among  these 


II.— MISS  BURNEY.  75 

famous  writers  are  not  found  Spenser,  Shakespeare 
and  Milton. 

In  every  part  of  literature  we  discover  the  vast 
and  sometimes  very  rapid  changes  that  take  place 
in  literary  taste.  Let  those  who  foretell  im- 
mortality for  Charlotte  Bronte  and  George  Eliot 
meditate  on  the  fate  that  has  come  upon  Fanny 
Burney.  The  men  who  admired  her  were  greater 
than  those  who  admired  these  two  novelists  of 
our  day.  Johnson  not  only  read  her  stories  with 
delight,  but,  as  it  were,  acted  them  in  his  playful 
talk  at  the  Thrales'  house  at  Streatham.  There 
were  passages  in  "  Evelina,"  he  said,  which  might 
do  honour  to  Richardson.  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds 
sat  up  all  night  to  finish  it.  When  Boswell 
mentioned  to  Johnson  her  novel  of  "  Cecilia," 
"  sir,"  said  he,  "  with  an  air  of  animated  satisfac- 
tion, if  you  talk  of  '  Cecilia,'  talk  on."  The  book 
came  out  just  as  Mrs.  Siddons  became  famous, 
and  both  women  were  the  talk  of  the  day. 
Johnson,  at  one  of  the  gay  assemblies  of  the 
Hon.  Miss  Monckton, — that  lively  lady  famous 
for  having  at  her  house  "  the  finest  bit  of  blue  " — 
Johnson,  I  say,  exclaimed  :  "  How  these  people 
talk  of  Mrs.  Siddons !  I  came  hither  in  full 
expectation  of  hearing  no  name  but  the  name  I 
love  and  pant  to  hear,  when  from  one  corner  to 


76  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

another  they  are  talking  of  that  jade,  Mrs.  Siddons! 
till,  at  last  wearied  out,  I  went  yonder  into  a 
corner,  and  repeated  to  myself  Burney !  Burney  ! 
Burney!  Burney!"  "Ay,  sir,"  said  Mr.  Metcalf, 
"  you  should  have  carved  it  upon  the  trees."  "  Sir, 
had  there  been  any  trees,  so  I  should ;  but  there 
being  none,  I  was  content  to  carve  it  upon  my 
heart."  * 

Mrs.  Siddon's  fame,  I  may  remark,  is  still  fresh  ; 
but  it  is  quite  possible  that  her  style  of  acting 
would  be  called  stilted  or  conventional  by  a 
modern  audience,  and  that  she  is  chiefly  praised 
because  she  is  unknown.  Had  not  a  single  copy 
of  Miss  Burney's  novels  been  preserved,  we  might 
be  mourning  over  that  youthful  female  genius  who 
kept  some  of  England's  greatest  men  from  their 
work  and  their  sleep.  For  the  admiration  of 
Johnson  and  Reynolds  was  shared  by  their  great 
contemporaries.  Gibbon  boasted  that  he  had  read 
the  whole  of  the  five  volumes  of  "  Cecilia  "  in  a 
day.  "  Tis  impossible,"  cried  Edmund  Burke ; 
"  it  cost  me  three  days,  and  you  know  I  never 
parted  with  it  from  the  day  I  first  opened  it." 
Even  Horace  Walpole,  who  was  out  of  harmony 
with  so  many  of  the  best  writers  of  his  age,  read 

1  Madame  D'Arblay's  "  Diary,"  i.  57  ;  ii.  196-7  ;  Bosvvell's 
"  Life  of  Johnson,"  iv.  223. 


//.— HENRY  FIELDING.  77 

it  through,  though  he  found  it  immeasurably  long. 
He  admitted  that  it  had,  with  all  its  faults,  "a 
thousand  beauties."  * 

How  splendid  is  the  tribute  paid  by  the  author 
of  the  "  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire  " 
to  Henry  Fielding.  "  Our  immortal  Fielding  was 
of  the  younger  branch  of  the  Earls  of  Denbigh, 
who  draw  their  origin  from  the  Counts  of  Habs- 
burgh,  the  lineal  descendants  of  Eltrico,  in  the 
seventh  century,  Duke  of  Alsace.  Far  different 
have  been  the  fortunes  of  the  English  and  German 
divisions  of  the  family  of  Habsburgh  :  the  former, 
the  knights  and  sheriffs  of  Leicestershire,  have 
risen  sloyly  to  the  dignity  of  a  peerage ;  the 
latter,  the  Emperors  of  Germany  and  Kings  of 
Spain,  have  threatened  the  liberty  of  the  Old,  and 
invaded  the  treasures  of  the  New  World.  The 
successors  of  Charles  V.  may  disdain  their  brethren 
of  England  ;  but  the  romance  of '  Tom  Jones,'  that 
exquisite  picture  of  human  manners,  will  outlive 
the  palace  of  the  Escurial,  and  the  imperial  eagle 
of  the  House  of  Austria."  Yet  Johnson  called 
Henry  Fielding  a  blockhead,  a  barren  rascal ; 
though  he  owned  that  he  had  read  his  novel  of 
"  Amelia "  at  a  sitting.  Richardson,  Fielding's 

"Madame  D'Arbla^s  "Diary,"  ii.  127;  Walpole's 
"Letters,"  viii.  285,  508. 


78  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

great  rival,  had  only  been  able  to  get  through  the 
first  volume  ;  "  for  I  found,"  he  writes,  "  the 
characters  and  situations  so  wretchedly  low  and 
dirty  that  I  imagined  that  I  could  not  be  in- 
terested for  any  one  of  them."  x  But  Richardson,  no 
doubt,  was  influenced  by  jealousy  and  resentment, 
though  it  must  be  admitted  that  even  with  the 
best  goodwill  he  would  have  found  it  hard  to 
discover  much  to  admire  in  a  writer  who  in 
sentiment  was  as  far  apart  from  him  as  a  man 
well  could  be.  When  we  come  to  examine  into 
Gibbon's  prophecy  for  Fielding  of  undying  fame, 
we  are  forced  to  own  that  that  great  novelist  is 
much  more  known  than  read.  He  who  outside 
the  society  of  men  of  letters  alludes  to  any 
incident  in  his  stories  is  little  likely  to  be  under- 
stood. His  strange  medley  of  innkeepers  and  their 
wives,  excisemen,  attorneys,  doctors,  parsons, 
squires,  lieutenants,  recruiting  sergeants,  lady's 
maids,  beaus,  fine  ladies,  rakes,  keepers  of  prisons, 
gamblers,  bailiffs,  have  well-nigh  passed  across  the 
stage,  and  found  their  final  exit  If  I  could 
believe  that  it  was  the  profligacy  of  his  writings 
which  had  brought  about  this  change,  then  there 

1  Gibbon's  "  Miscellaneous  Works,"  i.  4  ;  BoswelPs  "  Life 
of  Johnson,"  ii.  174 ;  Richardson's  "  Correspondence,"  iv. 
60. 


II.— MODERN  NO  VELS.  79 

might  be  some  cause  for  rejoicing.  For  profligate 
they  undoubtedly  were,  though  they  were  read  by 
three  of  the  purest-minded  women  of  their  age — 
Hannah  More,  Fanny  Burney,  and  Anna  Laetitia 
Barbauld.  But  I  see  lying  on  drawing-room  tables 
novels  which  are  ten  times  as  corrupting  as  Henry 
Fielding's  worst.  If  far  too  often  he  weakened 
the  delicacy  of  the  moral  sense,  yet  he  had  a 
true  eye  for  moral  beauty.  In  his  Amelia,  his 
Sophia  Western,  he  has  given  us  women  of  the 
most  beautiful  purity  and  loveliness  of  character. 
But  grievous  though  his  failings  were,  he  did  not 
add  one  more  to  them.  He  never  degrades  the 
intellect.  In  his  writings  there  is  no  intellectual 
corruption.  "  They  have  salt  enough  to  keep 
them  sweet,  wit  enough  to  preserve  them  from 
putrefaction."  I  could  wish  to  see  no  young  girl 
read  "Tom  Jones,"  or  even  "Joseph  Andrews," 
though  in  it  is  enshrined  that  first  of  all  English 
parsons,  the  simple,  high-minded,  learned,  and  most 
slovenly  priest,  Mr.  Abraham  Adams.  But  I 
would  rather  see  her  read  Fielding,  who  would 
teach  her  much  that  is  good,  who  would  train 
her  in  wit  and  in  the  knowledge  of  some  of  the 
best  qualities  of  the  heart,  than  the  works  of 
many  modern  female  novelists,  who  are  popular 
though  they  are  a  disgrace  to  their  sex;  whose 


8o  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

views  of  life  are  as  low  and  base  as  the  style  in 
which  they  write,  and  as  inaccurate  as  their 
English  ;  and  who  have  neither  wit,  nor  humour, 
nor  sense,  nor  learning,  nor  knowledge,  to  throw 
into  the  scale  as  a  balance  to  the  vast  weight  of 
unworthy  qualities  which  they  have  heaped  up  on 
the  other  side.  The  day  will  come,  I  trust,  when 
our  descendants,  purified  by  some  nobler  strain  of 
thought,  will  look  back  upon  many  of  the  favourite 
novelists  of  this  age,  male  as  well  as  female,  as 
men  looked  back  upon  the  evil  days  of  the 
Restoration.  The  work  will  have  to  be  done  over 
again  which  Addison  did  for  the  men  of  his  time, 
whose  praise  Johnson  has  celebrated  in  the  follow- 
ing fine  passage  : 

"  It  is  justly  observed  by  Tickell  that  Addison 
employed  wit  on  the  side  of  virtue  and  religion. 
He  not  only  made  the  proper  use  of  wit  himself, 
but  taught  it  to  others  ;  and  from  his  time  it  has 
been  generally  subservient  to  the  cause  of  reason 
and  of  truth.  He  has  dissipated  the  prejudice 
that  had  long  connected  gaiety  with  vice,  and 
easiness  of  manners  with  laxity  of  principles.  He 
has  restored  virtue  to  its  dignity,  and  taught 
innocence  not  to  be  ashamed.  This  is  an  elevation 
of  literary  character  'above  all  Greek,  above  all 
Roman  fame.'  No  greater  felicity  can  genius  attain 


//.— INTELLECTUAL  CORRUPTION.          81 

than  that  of  having  purified  intellectual  pleasure, 
separated  mirth  from  indecency,  and  wit  from 
licentiousness  ;  of  having  taught  a  succession  of 
writers  to  bring  elegance  and  gaiety  to  the  aid 
of  goodness  ;  and,  if  I  may  use  expressions  yet 
more  awful,  of  having  '  turned  many  to  righteous- 
ness.' "  * 

The  task  of  the  future  reformer  will  be  not  a 
little  different  and  perhaps  somewhat  harder. 
"  The  wits  of  Charles,"  corrupt  though  they  were, 
were  corrupt  wits.  They  stimulated  even  though 
they  debased  the  mind.  They  gave  it  a  quickness, 
an  alertness,  which  might  be  turned  to  better  ends. 
But  the  novelists  of  whom  I  am  speaking  deaden 
every  part  of  the  intellect.  They  are  dull  them- 
selves and  the  cause  of  dulness  in  others.  They 
leave  those  who  largely  indulge  in  them  in- 
tellectually unfit  for  any  work  which  requires 
sustained  thought.  They  are  the  dram-shop 
keepers  of  the  world  of  letters. 

1  Johnson's  "  Works,"  vii.  451. 


LECTURE  III. 


LECTURE  III. 

I  HAVE  been  led  far  away  from  the  judgment 
which  some  of  the  first  men  of  the  last  century 
passed  on  Fielding.  Surely  we  ought  to  look  upon 
our  own  decisions  as  full  of  uncertainty  when  we 
find  two  such  men  as  Johnson  and  Gibbon  wide  as 
the  poles  asunder  in  their  criticisms  on  their  famous 
contemporary.  The  barren  rascal,  the  blockhead 
of  one  man  will,  says  the  other,  outlive  the  palace 
of  the  Escurial  and  the  imperial  eagle  of  the  house 
of  Austria.  There  was  one  early  indication  that 
Fielding  did  not  merit  the  proud  title  that  was 
conferred  on  him  of  the  Prose  Homer  of  Human 
Nature.  It  has  been  justly  observed  that  distance 
has  somewhat  the  same  effect  as  time  in  the 
estimate  which  we  form  of  authors — an  effect, 
however,  which  is  rapidly  lessening  with  the 
increasing  facilities  of  communication,  and  the 
mingling  of  nations.  If  a  writer  was  understood 


86  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

and  admired  by  distant  nations,  there  was  a  greater 
likelihood  of  his  being  understood  and  admired  by 
distant  ages.  Now  Fielding  was  little  read  on  the 
Continent.  "The  foreigners,"  said  a  traveller  of 
the  time,  "  have  no  notion  of  his  books,  and  do  not 
understand  them,  as  the  manners  are  so  entirely 
English."  It  is  true  that  a  French  writer  com- 
plained that  the  Anglomania  was  gaining  on  his 
countrymen.  "  After  'Gulliver'  and  '  Pamela'  here 
comes  'Tom  Jones,'  and  they  are  mad  for  him."1 
The  madness,  however,  neither  extended  far  nor 
lasted  long. 

When  we  turn  to  Fielding's  great  rival,  Richard- 
son, we  find  at  all  events  that  outward  sign  of 
future  fame.  The  novels  of  the  awkward,  vain, 
middle-aged  English  bookseller  spread  rapidly 
from  land  to  land.  I  have  seen  an  autograph 
letter  written  to  David  Hume  by  the  Marquis  of 
Mirabeau,  Vami  du  peuple,  as  he  was  called,  the 
father  of  the  great  Mirabeau,  in  which  he  says  that 
Richardson  alone,  the  man  in  his  eyes  of  the 
greatest  worth,  made  him  often  regret  his  ignorance 
of  English.  Grimm,  the  great  critic,  seems  to  rank 
him  with  Homer,  Sophocles,  and  Raphael.  John- 
son's admiration  of  him  was  very  great.  He  was 

1  "  Letters  of  Mrs.  Calderwood,"  p.  208  ;  Jusserand's 
"  English  Novel,"  p.  24. 


III.— SAMUEL  RICHARDSON,  87 

one  of  the  few  men  "  whom  he  sought  after." 
"  There  is,"  he  said,  "  more  knowledge  of  the  heart 
in  one  of  his  letters  than  in  all  '  Tom  Jones.'  " 
When  the  Hon.  Thomas  Erskine,  afterwards  the 
famous  Lord  Chancellor,  objected :  "  Surely,  sir, 
Richardson  is  very  tedious,"  Johnson  replied, 
"  Why,  sir,  if  you  were  to  read  Richardson  for  the 
story,  your  impatience  would  be  so  much  fretted 
that  you  would  hang  yourself.  But  you  must  read 
him  for  the  sentiment,  and  consider  the  story  as 
only  giving  occasion  to  the  sentiment."  Lord 
Chesterfield,  "  the  undisputed  sovereign  of  wit  and 
fashion,"  said  of  him :  "  To  do  him  justice  he 
never  mistakes  nature,  and  he  has  surely  great 
knowledge  and  skill  both  in  painting  and  in 
interesting  the  heart."  Horace  Walpole,  I  must 
admit,  spoke  of  him  as  one  "  who  wrote  those 
deplorably  tedious  lamentations,  '  Clarissa '  and 
'  Sir  Charles  Grand ison,'  which  are  pictures  of  high 
life  as  conceived  by  a  bookseller,  and  romances 
as  they  would  be  spiritualized  by  a  Methodist 
teacher."  But  Walpole  had  not  the  world  with 
him,  above  all,  he  had  not  the  foreign  world  with 
him.  "  Clarissa  "  was  "  one  of  the  most  popular 
books  in  the  German  language,"  its  two  rivals 
being  Young's  "  Night  Thoughts  "  and  Hervey's 
"  Meditations  among  the  Tombs."  According 


88  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

to  Coleridge,  it  greatly  influenced  Schiller's 
"  Robbers."  Fifty  years  after  the  great  novelist's 
death,  Mrs.  Barbauld,  no  mean  critic,  while  ad- 
mitting that  "  his  works  were  not  found  to  be  so 
attractive  to  the  present  generation  as  they  were  to 
the  past,"  added  :  "  His  fame  stands  higher  abroad 
than  it  does  at  home.  He  is  as  highly  valued  by 
foreigners  as  Rousseau  is  by  us  ;  and  whatever  be 
his  defects,  his  intrinsic  merit  is  too  great  not  to 
place  him  above  the  varying  taste  of  the  day. 
When  a  hundred  novels  that  are  now  read  are 
passed  away  and  forgotten,  "  Clarissa  "  will  hold 
its  place  among  those  standard  works  that  adorn 
the  literature  of  our  country."  J 

Jeremy  Bentham  describes  how,  in  his  childhood, 
while  staying  at  his  grandmother's  house  in  Berk- 
shire, he  "used  to  climb  a  lofty  elm  and  read  in  its 
branches.  I  was,"  he  continues,  "  the  more  fond  of 
this  while  the  labourers  were  thrashing  corn  in  the 
neighbourhood,  as  I  was  delighted  to  be  in  society 
with  which  I  was  not  compelled  to  mix.  No 
situation  brought  with  it  more  felicity  than  to  hide 
myself  in  the  tree,  and  having  read  for  some  time 

1  Sainte-Beuve's  "  Causeries  de  Lundi,"  vii.  311;  Bos- 
well's  "Life  of  Johnson,"  ii.  174,  iii.  314;  Walpole's 
"  Letters,"  iv.  305  ;  Coleridge's  "  Biographia  Literaria,"  p. 
276  ;  Barbauld's  edition  of  "  Clarissa,"  vol.  i.  p.  xlvi. 


III.— RICHARDSON  AND  BENTHAM.         89 

to  descend  to  gather  up  wheat  for  the  peasants  to 
thrash,  and  then  to  mount  again  to  my  leafy 
throne."  Among  the  books  over  which  he  pored 
was  Richardson's  famous  novel.  "  '  Clarissa '  kept 
me  day  after  day  incessantly  bathed  in  tears."  * 
He  would  have  done  his  own  great  work  far  more 
easily  and  quickly  had  he  gone  on  feeding  his 
imagination.  He  stifled  it  in  himself  and  in  his 
disciples  too,  training  them  to  be  rather  reasoning 
machines  than  men  and  women.  He  forgot  the 
lesson  which  he  learnt  in  his  leafy  throne  ;  he  for- 
got the  whispering  wind,  the  rustling  leaves,  the 
swaying  branch,  the  sound  of  the  falling  flail,  all 
in  delightful  harmony  with  the  words  of  the  great 
master  of  the  feelings  ;  he  put  far  from  him  grace- 
fulness of  language  and  tenderness  of  thought,  and 
all  that  wins  its  way  to  the  head  through  the 
heart.  He  struggled  hard  and  long  for  man's  wel- 
fare, but  no  words  of  his  moved  men  to  tears.  He 
had  no  persuasiveness,  and  was  not  understood  till 
he  had  found  interpreters.  That  Richardson  should 
thus  have  affected  the  founder  of  the  Utilitarian 
Philosophy  is  indeed  a  striking  proof  of  his  power. 
When  those  who  were  in  their  infancy  when  the 
author  of  "  Clarissa  "  died  had  now,  if  they  sur- 
vived, reached  man's  limit  of  fourscore,  Macar'ay 
1  Bentham's  "  Works,"  x.  22. 


90  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

in  his  famous  speech  on  copyright  said  of  him  in 
the  House  of  Commons  :  "  No  writings  have  done 
more  to  raise  the  fame  of  English  genius  in  foreign 
countries.  No  writings  are  more  deeply  pathetic. 
No  writings,  those  of  Shakespeare  excepted,  show 
more  profound  knowledge  of  the  human  heart." 
Thackeray  has  described  to  us  the  great  historian's 
admiration  of  the  famous  novelist.  "  I  spoke  to 
him  once  about  '  Clarissa.' "  "Not  read  'Clarissa'!" 
he  cried  out.  "If  you  have  once  read  'Clarissa/ 
and  are  infected  by  it,  you  can't  leave  it.  When  I 
was  in  India  I  passed  one  hot  season  in  the  Hills  ; 
and  there  were  the  Governor-general,  and  the 
Secretary  of  Government,  and  the  Commander- 
in-chief,  and  their  wives.  I  had  '  Clarissa '  with 
me ;  and  as  soon  as  they  began  to  read,  the  whole 
station  was  in  a  passion  of  excitement  about  Miss 
Harlowe  and  her  misfortunes,  and  her  scoundrelly 
Lovelace.  The  Governor's  wife  seized  the  book, 
the  Secretary  waited  for  it,  the  Chief  Justice  could 
not  read  it  for  tears."  He  acted  the  whole  scene  ; 
he  paced  up  and  down  the  Athenaeum  library.  I 
dare  say  he  could  have  spoken  pages  of  the  book  : 
of  that  book,  and  of  what  countless  piles  of 
others." x  But  Richardson  has  passed  away. 

1  Macaulay's  "Miscellaneous  Works,"  ed.  1871,  p.  615; 
Trevehan's  "  Life  of  Macaulay,"  ed.  1877,  i.  381. 


III.— SCOTTISH  ASSOCIATIONS.  91 

Even  so  far  back  as  my  boyhood  I  remember 
hearing  wonder  expressed  when  in  company  a  lady 
said  that  she  had  read  "  Sir  Charles  Grandison  " 
from  beginning  to  end.  Since  then  there  has  been 
a  certain  revival  of  interest  in  him — a  revival  due, 
as  most  such  revivals  are,  rather  to  students  of 
literature  than  to  any  change  in  the  popular  taste. 
For  one  reader  of  his  novels  there  are  perhaps  ten 
readers  of  his  rival's,  neglected  though  Fielding  is. 
Of  all  the  changes  in  literary  taste,  I  know  of 
none  more  sudden  and  more  striking  than  that 
which  brought  Scotland,  the  Scotch  language,  and 
the  Scotch  people  into  general  popularity.  Let 
me  read  to  you  a  passage,  which,  when  I  first  read 
it,  led  me  to  wonder  almost  as  much  as  a  traveller 
might  wonder  who,  returning  to  some  spot  in  the 
Western  States  of  America,  which  a  few  years 
before  he  had  known  as  a  wilderness,  should  find 
there  some  large  and  thriving  town.  The  writer 
says :  "  The  influence  of  Scottish  associations,  so 
far  as  it  is  favourable  to  antiquity,  is  confined  to 
Scotchmen  alone,  and  furnishes  no  resources  to 
the  writer  who  aspires  to  a  place  among  the 
English  classics.  Nay,  such  is  the  effect  of  that 
provincial  situation  to  which  Scotland  is  now 
reduced,  that  the  transactions  of  former  ages  are 
apt  to  convey  to  ourselves  exaggerated  concep- 


92  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

tions  of  barbarism,  from  the  uncouth  and  degraded 
dialect  in  which  they  are  recorded."  Now  it  was 
no  Englishman,  no  Southron,  who  wrote  this. 
They  are  the  words  of  the  famous  Scotch  pro- 
fessor, Dugald  Stewart,  in  whom  glowed  the 
perfervidum  ingenium  Scotorum.  It  was  written 
in  a  memoir  of  the  Scotch  historian,  Robertson,1 
and  it  was  read  before  the  Royal  Society  of  Edin- 
burgh. It  was  but  nine  years  later  that  Walter 
Scott  published  his  "  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel," 
and  but  eighteen  years  later  that  he  published  his 
"  Waverley."  He  may  have  been  present  when 
this  paper  was  read,  for  of  this  honourable  Society 
in  later  years  he  was  the  President.  The  blood 
perhaps  flowed  faster  in  his  youthful  veins,  as  he 
listened  to  these  words,  and  his  pulse  beat  quicker, 
as  he  felt  hidden  powers  stirring  within  him — 
powers  which  should  break  through  the  narrow 
bonds  of  mere  locality,  and  extend  "  the  influence 
of  Scottish  associations,"  from  one  end  of  the  wide 
world  to  the  other.  Scott  seems  to  me  to  have 
answered  the  plaintive  question,  which  only  two 
years  before  the  "  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel "  was 
written,  was  put  by  the  great  English  poet  as,  in 
his  wanderings  in  the  Highlands,  he  heard  the 
Solitary  Reaper  singing  to  herself — 
1  Page  185. 


JJ1.-SIR  WALTER  SCOTT.  93 

**  Will  no  one  tell  me  what  she  sings  ? 
Perhaps  the  plaintive  numbers  flow 
For  old,  unhappy,  far-off  things, 
And  battles  long  ago  : 
Or  is  it  some  more  humble  lay, 
Familiar  matter  of  to-day  ? 
Some  natural  sorrow,  loss,  or  pain, 
That  has  been,  and  may  be  again." 

Scott  has  told  us  all  that  the  wandering  poet  had 
asked.     He  has  told  us  of  the 

"unhappy  far-off  things 
and  battles  long  ago ;  " 

he  has  told  us  of 

"  Familiar  matters  of  to-day, 

Some  natural  sorrow,  loss,  or  pain, 
That  has  been,  and  may  be  again," 

and  he  has  so  told  his  tale  that  it  is  listened  to  by 
old  and  young,  by  rich  and  poor,  by  learned  and 
unlearned,  by  all  peoples,  nations,  and  languages. 

To  him  who  has  studied  the  history  of  the 
eighteenth  century  the  change  which  he  has 
wrought  is  indeed  wonderful.  Not  only  in  Eng- 
land, but  also  in  Lowland  Scotland,  the  High- 
landers in  the  days  of  our  great-grandfathers  were 
looked  upon  with  a  mixture  of  terror  and  con- 
tempt. When  Johnson  and  Boswell  in  the 


94  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

country  between  Loch  Ness  and  the  western  sea, 
in  their  mid-day  halt,  were  surrounded  by  the 
M'Craas,  "  I  observed  to  Dr.  Johnson,"  Boswell 
records,  "  it  was  much  the  same  as  being  with  a 
tribe  of  Indians."  "Yes,  sir,"  replied  Johnson, 
"  but  not  so  terrifying."  "  The  villagers,"  writes 
Johnson,  "  gathered  about  us  in  considerable  num- 
bers, I  believe  without  any  evil  intention,  but  with 
a  very  savage  wildness  of  aspect  and  manner." 
Ray,  in  his  "History  of  the  Rebellion  of  1745," 
speaks  of  the  Young  Pretender's  army  as  "  the 
barbarians  that  overrun  the  country."  Hume, 
describing  them  "  as  a  people  who  from  the  miser- 
able disadvantages  of  their  soil  and  climate  were 
perpetually  struggling  with  the  greatest  necessities 
of  nature  ;  who  from  the  imperfections  of  govern- 
ment lived  in  a  continual  state  of  internal  hostility; 
ever  harassed  with  the  incursions  of  neighbouring 
tribes,  or  meditating  revenge  and  retaliation  on 
their  neighbours" — Hume,  I  say,  thus  describing 
them,  asks :  "  Have  such  a  people  leisure  to  think 
of  any  poetry,  except  perhaps  a  miserable  song  or 
ballad,  in  praise  of  their  own  chieftain,  or  to  the 
disparagement  of  his  rivals  ?  "  Adam  Smith,  con- 
sidering them  as  soldiers,  says :  "  In  point  of 
obedience  they  were  always  much  inferior  to  what 
is  reported  of  the  Tartars  and  Arabs.  As,  too, 


III.— JOHN  HOME.  95 

from  their  stationary  life  they  spend  less  of  their 
time  in  the  open  air,  they  were  always  less  accus- 
tomed to  military  exercises,  and  were  less  expert 
in  the  use  of  their  arms  than  the  Tartars  and  Arabs 
are  said  to  be."  John  Home,  the  dramatist,  in  the 
year  1769  had  written  a  tragedy  on  a  Highland 
story,  and  called  it  "  Rivine."  "  The  names  of  the 
persons  of  the  pieces,"  wrote  Murphy,  more  than 
thirty  years  later,  "  are  grating  to  an  English  ear, 
Kastrecl,  Dunton,  Connon,  and  the  like  are  exotics, 
beneath  the  dignity  of  tragedy.  The  play  might 
as  well  be  written  in  Erse.  It  was  not  fit  to  be 
represented  anywhere  on  this  side  of  Johnny 
Groats,  at  the  remotest  part  of  Scotland."  "  Gar- 
rick,"  says  Dr.  Alexander  Carlyle,  "justly  alarmed 
at  the  jealousy  and  dislike  which  prevailed  at  that 
time  against  Lord  Bute  and  the  Scotch,"  had  pre- 
vailed on  Home  "  to  change  the  title  of  '  Rivine ' 
into  that  of '  The  Fatal  Discovery,'  and  had  pro- 
vided a  student  of  Oxford,  who  appeared  at  the 
rehearsals  as  the  author." * 

How  vast  is  the  change  in  sentiment  that  has 
been  wrought  since  the  days  when  a  Highland 

1  Boswell's  "  Life  of  Johnson,"  v.  142  ;  James  Ray's 
"  History  of  the  Rebellion  of  1745,"  p.  vii. ;  Burton's  "  Life 
of  Hume,"  i.  479;  "Wealth  of  Nations,"  ed.  1811,  iii.  83; 
Murphy's  "  Life  of  Garrick,"  p.  295  ;  "Autobiography  of  Dr. 
A.  Carlyle,"  p.  509. 


96  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

name  was  thought  sufficient  to  damn  a  play. 
Now,  not  only  Lowlanders,  but  even  Englishmen, 
when  they  go  to  "  the  mountains  of  the  North  " 
are  proud  to  disguise  themselves  in  a  dress  which 
their  forefathers  in  Edinburgh  or  in  London  would 
have  looked  on  with  a  feeling  of  scorn  not  alto- 
gether unmingled  with  fear.  Perhaps  by  the  end 
of  the  twentieth  century  the  descendants  of  the 
Orangemen  of  Belfast  and  Londonderry,  and 
people  of  rank  and  fortune  from  England,  when 
they  go  to  shoot  and  fish  in  the  wilds  of  Kerry  or 
Connemara,  will  hope  in  their  long  frieze  coats, 
their  knee-breeches,  and  their  worsted  stockings,  to 
be  taken  for  the  children  of  the  soil.1  It  was  to 
Sir  Walter  Scott  that  this  vast  and  most  sudden 
change  was  greatly  due.  Something,  no  doubt} 
had  been  done  by  causes  which  I  have  not  time  to 
examine.  But  he  was  the  mighty  wizard  of  the 
north  who  waved  his  magic  wand,  and  swept  away 
the  prejudices  of  men,  and  some  of  their  sounder 
judgments  too. 

Dugald  Stewart  was  by  no  means  alone  among 
Scotchmen  in  his  contempt  of  "the  uncouth  and 
degraded  dialect "  of  his  forefathers.  Hume,  in  his 
"  History  of  England,"  describes  how  in  the 
beginning  of  the  Great  Rebellion  the  chaplains  of 
1  "  Letters  of  D.  Hume  to  W.  Strahan,"  p.  62. 


///.—  VULGAR  BROAD  SCOTCH.  97 

the  Scottish  Commissioners  in  London  were  run 
after  by  eager  listeners.  The  church  which  had 
been  assigned  to  them  would  not  hold  the  multi- 
tudes of  all  ranks  who  crowded  to  it.  "  Those 
who  were  excluded,"  he  continues,  "  clung  to  the 
doors  or  windows  in  hopes  of  catching  at  least 
some  distant  murmur  or  broken  phrases  of  the 
holy  rhetoric.  All  the  eloquence  of  Parliament, 
now  well  refined  from  pedantry,  animated  with  the 
spirit  of  liberty,  and  employed  in  the  most 
important  interests,  was  not  attended  to  with  such 
insatiable  avidity  as  were  these  lectures,  delivered 
with  ridiculous  cant,  and  a  provincial  accent  full  of 
barbarism  and  of  ignorance."  Beattie,  a  professor 
at  Aberdeen,  Burns's  "  sweet,  harmonious  Beattie," 
in  his  "  Essays  on  Poetry  and  Music,"  speaking 
of  what  he  calls  "  the  vulgar  broad  Scotch,"  says  : 
"  To  write  in  that  tongue,  and  yet  to  write 
seriously,  is  now  impossible  ;  such  is  the  effect  of 
mean  expressions  applied  to  an  important  subject ; 
so  that  if  a  Scotch  merchant,  or  man  of  business, 
were  to  write  to  his  countryman  in  his  native 
dialect  the  other  would  conclude  that  he  was  in 
jest.  Not  that  this  language  is  naturally  more 
ridiculous  than  others.  But  for  more  than  half  a 
century  past  it  has  even  by  the  Scots  themselves 
been  considered  as  the  dialect  of  the  vulgar."  Of 

7 


98  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

Ramsay's  "Gentle  Shepherd"  he  says:  "To  an 
Englishman  who  had  never  conversed  with  the 
common  people  of  Scotland  the  language  would 
appear  only  antiquated,  obscure,  or  unintelligible  ; 
but  to  a  Scotchman,  who  thoroughly  understands 
it,  and  is  aware  of  its  vulgarity,  it  appears  ludicrous, 
from  the  contrast  between  meanness  of  phrase  and 
dignity  or  seriousness  of  sentiment."  J  Ten  years 
after  the  Aberdeen  professor  and  poet  had  pro- 
claimed to  the  world  the  degradation  of  his 
mother-tongue,  there  was  printed  in  a  little 
country  town  in  the  south-west  of  Scotland  a 
small  volume  entitled  "  Poems,  chiefly  in  the 
Scottish  Dialect,"  by  Robert  Burns.  If  the 
"  Cotter's  Saturday  Night "  did  not  make  Beattie 
blush  for  the  wrong  he  had  done  his  native 
language,  he  must  indeed  have  been  steeped  in 
prejudice  and  affectation.  His  blushes  could  not 
undo  the  harm  he  had  done.  It  was  perhaps  this 
very  passage  in  his  writings  which  led  Burns  in 
this  noble  poem  suddenly  to  drop  his  natural 
dialect  when  he  came  to  describe  the  reading  of 
"  the  big  Ha'  Bible,"  and  to  take  to  English,  in 
which  he  rarely  moved  with  ease  or  grace. 

Who  with  such  examples  before  him  of  the  in- 

*  Hume's    "  History   of   England,"    ed.    1773,   vi.   385  ; 
Beattie's  "Essays,"  ed.  1779,  P-  381. 


///.—  LITERARY  PARTISANSHIP.  99 

firmity  of  human  foresight  can  be  bold  enough  to 
forecast  the  future  of  literature  ?  Who,  remember- 
ing Dugald  Stewart's  lament  as  a  man  of  letters 
over  "the  provincial  situation  to  which  Scotland 
is  now  reduced,"  can  forbear  reflecting  on  the 
changes  that  may  be  wrought  in  the  world  of 
readers  by  one  single  man  of  commanding  genius  ? 
Surely  these  vast  revolutions  in  literary  taste 
which  I  have  been  describing — revolutions  in  which 
old  favourites  are  pulled  down  and  new  favourites 
set  up — will  inspire  us,  if  we  are  wise,  with  a  great 
mistrust  of  our  own  judgment,  and  a  great  willing- 
ness to  accept  the  judgment  of  the  world,  when  it 
has  stood  the  test  of  many  generations.  Yet  such 
is  the  ardour  with  which  in  our  youth  we  join  our- 
selves, even  in  literature,  to  a  party,  that  we  are  as 
unjust  in  our  judgments  as  if  we  were  nothing 
better  than  a  set  of  mere  politicians.  If  from 
pleasure  we  read  those  whom  we  admire,  from  a 
kind  of  ridiculous  pride  we  abuse  those  of  whom 
we  know  next  to  nothing.  When  I  look  back  on 
my  early  years  there  are  few  things  that  I  more 
regret  than  this  ignorant  partisanship.  I  was 
brought  up  among  those  whose  canon  of  taste  was 
contained  in  the  Edinburgh  Review.  I  sat,  as  it 
were,  at  the  feet  of  Jeffrey  and  Macaulay.  Not 
a  doubt  did  I  ever  hear  cast  on  their  infallibility. 


ioo  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

In  them  was  contained  all  the  law  and  the 
prophets.  Byron's  "  English  Bards  and  Scotch 
Reviewers  "  was  constantly  in  the  hands  and  on  the 
tongues  of  my  young  associates.  We  learnt  to 
laugh  with  the  insolent  poet  at  far  better  and  far 
nobler  men  than  himself.  Wordsworth  was  our 
scoff.  Yet  I  have  the  satisfaction  of  thinking  that 
though  it  was  against  the  faith  in  which  I  had 
been  brought  up,  I  could  not  help  taking  pleasure 
in  "  We  are  Seven,"  and  the  few  simpler  poems  of 
his  that  I  chanced  to  see.  It  is  a  pleasure  to  me 
now  to  reflect  that  I  did  not  let  slip  the  chance 
that  I  once  had  of  seeing  that  great  poet  When 
I  was  a  boy  of  perhaps  thirteen  or  fourteen  I  was 
told,  as  I  was  walking  through  Ambleside,  that 
Mr.  Wordsworth  was  just  ahead  in  his  chaise.  I 
ran  after  him,  and  caught  him  up  there  where  the 
old  market-cross  used  to  stand.  He,  I  fancied, 
seeing  a  lad  eagerly  running  and  guessing  what  was 
in  his  heart,  good-naturedly  checked  his  horse  and 
looked  full  round.  I  saw  his  venerable  face,  but  I 
little  knew  at  the  time  how  dear  he  was  to  become 
tome. 

I  entered  Oxford  as  ignorant  of  the  new  School 
of  Poetry  as  any  one  well  could  be.  I  do  not  think 
that  I  had  ever  seen  a  single  poem  of  Keats  or 
Shelley.  Mr.  Browning's  name  was,  I  believe,  un- 


III.— ALMA  MATER.  101 

known  to  me.  Of  Wordsworth  and  Mr.  Tennyson 
I  had  read  only  a  very  few  poems.  Tennyson  I 
had  heard  treated  with  the  same  scorn  as  his  great 
forerunners.  It  was  for  me  a  most  happy  day 
which  first  brought  me  within  the  influence  of  this 
noble  University,  though  the  first  experience  was 
bitter  enough.  The  coat  of  ignorance  and  conceit 
which  had  formed  round  me  had  to  be  stripped  off, 
and  it  had  grown  so  close,  that,  in  stripping,  it 
seemed  to  bring  with  it  not  a  little  of  the  skin. 
When  once  more  I  began  to  breathe  freely,  I 
exultingly  owned  that, 

"  Largior  hie  campos  aether  et  lumine  vestit 
Purpureo  ;  Solemque  suum,  sua  sidera  norunt." 

("  Therein  a  more  abundant  heaven  clothes  all  the  meadows' 

face 

With  purple  light ;  and  their  own  sun  and  their  own  stars 
they  have.") 

Let  me  here  show  how  much  in  the  happy 
season  of  youth,  when  fresh  forms  are  so  easily 
taken,  when  custom  does  not  yet 

"  lie  upon  us  with  a  weight 
Heavy  as  frost  and  deep  almost  as  life,'' 

how  much  in  that  bounteous  time  one  friend  can 
do  for  another.  It  so  chanced  that  in  my  second 


102  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

term  I  every  day  sat  at  dinner  in  hall  by  a  man 
very  much  my  senior.  In  fact,  shortly  after  I 
entered  he  took  his  Bachelor's  degree.  Something 
in  my  talk  must,  I  suppose,  have  interested  him. 
At  all  events  he  thought  me  worth  taking  in  hand. 
He  was,  I  remember,  amused  at  the  boldness,  I 
might  say  the  impudent  audacity,  of  my  literary 
judgments,  and  surprised,  moreover,  both  at  the 
extent  and  the  narrowness  of  my  reading.  He 
proposed  that  he  should  come  into  my  room  every 
evening,  and  over  a  cup  of  tea  should  read  with  me 
the  "  In  Memoriam."  We  went  carefully  through 
the  whole  poem,  and  by  the  end  of  it  I  belonged 
to  the  new  school.  So  ardent  an  admirer  did  I 
become  of  its  author,  that  I  not  only  upheld  his 
merit  in  our  College  Debating  Society  against  a 
strong  opposition,  but  scarcely  had  I  taken  my 
degree  before,  in  the  very  village  in  which  I  had 
been  brought  up,  at  the  very  feet,  as  it  were,  of 
Gamaliel,  in  a  lecture  which  I  gave  at  the 
Mechanics'  Institute,  I  boldly  challenged  for  him 
a  place  among  our  great  poets.  Unhappily  for 
me  my  friend  had  that  failing  of  a  literary  apostle 
against  which  I  have  been  warning  you.  He  was 
so  clear-sighted  to  the  merits  of  the  modern 
school  that  he  was  blind  to  the  merits  of  that 
which  it  had  supplanted.  From  him  and  his 


III.— RIVAL  SCHOOLS.  103 

friends  I  learnt  to  speak  of  Pope  with  the  same 
ignorant  contempt  as  I  had  before  spoken  of 
\Vordsworth  and  Tennyson.  I  went  on  to  read 
Mr.  Browning,  and  as  my  admiration  for  him  in- 
creased, so  increased  my  scorn  for  the  poets  who 
were  of  a  widely  different  school. 

I  think  with  grief  of  the  time,  the  pleasure  and 
the  improvement  which  I  have  lost  by  this  con- 
tempt of  ignorance.  He  who  refuses  to  read  Pope 
loses,  if  nothing  else,  the  delight  that  is  given  by 
perfect  versification.  "  Sir,"  said  Johnson,  "  a  thou- 
sand years  may  elapse  before  there  shall  appear 
another  man  with  a  power  of  versification  equal  to 
that  of  Pope."  Listen  to  the  melody  of  these 
lines,  which  he  wrote  when  he  was  but  sixteen 
years  old — "  the  marvellous  boy "  that  he  was, 
marvellous  far  than  Chatterton. 

11  No  grateful  dews  descend  from  evening  skies, 
Nor  morning  odours  from  the  flowers  arise  ; 
No  rich  perfumes  refresh  the  fruitful  field, 
Nor  fragrant  herbs  their  native  incense  yield. 
The  balmy  zephyrs,  silent  since  her  death, 
Lament  the  ceasing  of  a  sweeter  breath  ; 
The  industrious  bees  neglect  the  golden  store  ; 
Fair  Daphne's  dead,  and  sweetness  is  no  more." 

But  there  is  far  more  than  versification.  Pope 
is  a  great  poet,  the  greatest  perhaps  in  his  class, 


104  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

though  his  class  certainly  is  far  below  the  highest. 
Which  of  us  is  so  rich  in  poetic  thought  that  he 
can  venture  to  scorn  those  few  lines  in  which  he 
describes  the  poor  Indian's  hope  of  finding 

"  Behind  the  cloud-topt  hill  an  humbler  heav'n  ; ' 

or  that  noble  passage  in  which  speaking  of  the 
Deity  he  says  : — 

"  Who  sees  with  equal  eye.  as  God  of  all, 
A  hero  perish,  or  a  sparrow  fall, 
Atoms  or  systems  into  ruins  hurl'd, 
And  now  a  bubble  burst,  and  now  a  world." 

Was  the  man  no  poet  who  asks 

"  Is  it  for  thee  the  lark  ascends  and  sings  ? 
Joy  tunes  his  voice,  joy  elevates  his  wings. 
Is  it  for  thee  the  linnet  pours  his  throat? 
Loves  of  his  own  and  raptures  swell  the  note." 

As  we  study  his  perfect  versification,  we  may 
justly  apply  to  him  one  of  his  finest  couplets, 

"  The  spider's  touch,  how  exquisitely  fine  ! 
Feels  at  each  thread,  and  lives  along  the  line." 

Pope's  touch,  exquisitely  fine,  does  indeed  seem 
to  live  along  almost  every  line  which  he  wrote.    In 


HI.— ALEXANDER  POPE.  105 

his  "  Satires  "  and  his  "  Moral  Essays,"  "  the  position 
and  choice  of  words,"  is  surely,  as  Coleridge  main- 
tained, "  almost  faultless."  r  The  more  we  study 
style,  the  more  we  train  our  ear  to  the  melody  of 
sentences  and  the  sweetness  of  sound,  the  more  we 
train  our  understanding  to  the  precise  use  of 
words,  the  more  shall  we  find  to  admire  in  Pope. 
We  shall  not,  therefore,  mistake  his  position  as  a 
poet,  or  assign  to  him  a  place  in  the  first  rank. 
He  will  still  be  far,  immeasurably  far  below  Shake- 
speare and  Milton,  but  he  will  be  among  the  first, 
if,  indeed,  he  is  not  the  very  first,  in  the  class  to 
which  he  belongs.  He  is  equal  to  Horace,  and 
Horace  has  defied  "  the  effacing  fingers,"  of  nearly 
two  thousand  years'  decay.  There  are  those  who 
refuse  to  read  him  because  his  school  of  poetry  is 
essentially  artificial.  He  may  be  at  the  very  top  ; 
but  top  or  bottom  they  will  have  none  of  it.  Men 
who  are  far  beneath  him  in  the  writer's  art  are 
more  to  their  taste,  if  only  they  belong  to  a  more 
natural  school.  They  would  more  willingly  con- 
sort with  one  who  serves  in  heaven  than  with  him 
who  reigns  in  hell.  Pope,  it  is  true,  if  all  his  ex- 
cellencies were  increased  a  thousand-fold,  would 
never  be  a  step  nearer  to  Shakespeare  and  Milton. 
The  lofty  and  lonely  heights  on  which  they  sit  are 
1  "  Biographia  Literaria,"  p.  19. 


io6  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

separated  by  a  great  gulf  from  the  pleasant  hill  to 
which  he  has  climbed  ;  while  far  beneath  them, 
but  still  on  the  same  range,  are  Wordsworth,  Keats 
and  Shelley,  Tennyson  and  Browning.  The  foolish 
worshippers  of  Browning,  indeed,  in  their  wild 
extravagance  place  him  above  Milton  ;  but  I  will 
not  do  them  the  injustice  to  believe  that  they  have 
ever  read  the  "  Paradise  Lost."  They  are  "  shallow 
in  themselves,"  without  being  "  deep-versed  in 
books."  In  the  case  of  these  five  poets  we  could 
conceive  that,  if  their  genius  and  their  art  had 
been  multiplied  again  and  again,  they  might  have 
stood  on  "the  starry  threshold"  by  the  side  of 
Milton,  close  before  the  throne  of  Shakespeare. 
But  though  the  poetry  of  even  the  lowest  of  the 
five  is  far  truer  to  nature  than  Pope's,  yet  his  art 
may  be  so  much  greater  as  to  strike  the  balance. 
Let  me  read  to  you  what  one  of  the  masters  of 
their  school  says  of  the  French  tragedians.  "  How- 
ever meanly  I  may  think  of  their  serious  drama, 
even  in  its  most  perfect  specimens,  the  French 
tragedies  are  consistent  works  of  art,  and  the  off- 
spring of  great  intellectual  power.  Preserving  a 
fitness  in  the  parts,  and  a  harmony  in  the  whole, 
they  form  a  nature  of  their  own,  though  a  false 
nature.  Still  they  excite  the  minds  of  the  spec- 
tators to  active  thought,  to  striving  after  ideal 


III.— POPE  AND  ADD1SON.  107 

excellence."  z  That  kind  of  excellence  which  can 
be  attained  by  a  laborious  study  and  practice  of 
style  should  surely  be  set  before  our  eyes,  for  at 
few  times  in  the  history  of  our  country  has  slovenly 
and  eccentric  writing  more  thriven  than  in  these 
latter  days.  We  shall  not  take  Pope  as  our  model ; 
but  we  can,  at  least,  be  stirred  up  to  strive  after 
ideal  excellence  by  the  perfection  to  which  he 
attained.  Where  can  we  find  so  many  faultless 
lines  together  as  those  famous  two-and-twenty  in 
which  he  attacks  Addison  : 

"  Peace  to  all  such  !  but  were  there  one  whose  fires 
True  genius  kindles,  and  fair  fame  inspires ; 
Bless'd  with  each  talent  and  each  art  to  please, 
And  born  to  write,  converse,  and  live  with  ease  ; 
Should  such  a  man,  too  fond  to  rule  alone, 
Bear,  like  the  Turk,  no  brother  near  the  throne, 
View  him  with  scornful,  yet  with  jealous  eyes, 
And  hate  for  arts  that  caused  himself  to  rise  ; 
Damn  with  faint  praise,  assent  with  civil  leer, 
And,  without  sneering,  teach  the  rest  to  sneer  ; 
Willing  to  wound,  and  yet  afraid  to  strike, 
Just  hint  a  fault,  and  hesitate  dislike  ; 
Alike  reserved  to  blame  or  to  commend, 
A  timorous  foe,  and  a  suspicious  friend  ; 
Dreading  e'en  fools,  by  flatterers  besieged, 
And  so  obliging  that  he  ne'er  obliged  ; 
Like  Cato,  give  his  little  senate  laws, 
And  sit  attentive  to  his  own  applause ; 


Coleridge's  "  Biographia  Literaria,"  p.  257. 


io8  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

While  wits  and  Templars  every  sentence  raise, 
And  wonder  with  a  foolish  face  of  praise — 
Who  but  must  laugh,  if  such  a  man  there  be  ? 
Who  would  not  weep,  if  Atticus  were  he  ?  " 

"Time,"  writes  Johnson,  "  quickly  puts  an  end 
to  artificial  and  accidental  fame;  and  Addison  is 
to  pass  through  futurity  protected  only  by  his 
genius."1  He  is  protected,  too,  by  the  genius  of 
his  enemy.  It  is  impossible  that  this  passage, 
perfect  wit  in  perfect  language,  can  ever  be  for- 
gotten. As  long  as  men  read  it  they  will  seek  to 
know  more  of  this  Atticus,  and  they  will  feel  how 
stainless  must  have  been  the  character  of  a  man, 
how  bright  his  wit,  how  delightful  his  writings,  who 
sustained  such  an  attack  unhurt  and  untarnished. 
Pope,  as  he  watched  the  effect  of  his  blow  at  the 
reputation  of  his  great  rival,  might  well  have 
exclaimed  : 

"  We  do  it  wrong,  being  so  majestical, 
To  offer  it  the  show  of  violence ; 
For  it  is,  as  the  air,  invulnerable, 
And  our  vain  blows  malicious  mockery." 

Perfect  as  Pope  is  in  satire,  no  less  perfect  is  he 
in  praise.  In  the  same  poem  in  which  he  attacks 
Addison,  a  few  lines  earlier  he  had  thus  celebrated 
his  friends. 

1  Johnson's  "  Works,"  vii.  451. 


Ill— A  POETS  DECORATIONS.  109 

"  Why  did  I  write  ?  what  sin  to  me  unknown 
Dipp'd  me  in  ink,  my  parents',  or  my  own  ? 
As  yet  a  child,  nor  yet  a  fool  to  fame, 
I  lisp'd  in  numbers,  for  the  numbers  came  ; 
I  left  no  calling  for  this  idle  trade, 
No  duty  broke,  no  father  disobey'd  : 
The  muse  but  served  to  ease  some  friend,  not  wife, 
To  help  me  through  this  long  disease,  my  life  ; 
To  second,  Arbuthnot,  thy  art  and  care, 
And  teach  the  being  you  preserved  to  bear. 

But  why  then  publish  ?     Granville  the  polite, 
And  knowing  Walsh,  would  tell  me  I  could  write  ; 
Well-natured  Garth  inflamed  with  early  praise, 
And  Congreve  loved,  and  Swift  endured  my  lays  ; 
The  courtly  Talbot,  Somers,  Sheffield  read, 
E'en  mitred  Rochester  would  nod  the  head, 
And  St.  John's  self  (great  Dryden's  friends  before) 
With  open  arms  received  one  poet  more." 


The  greatest  monarch  could  not  confer  such 
honours  as  these.  What  was  Lewis  XIV.  among 
his  courtiers  in  the  great  gallery  of  Versailles,  what 
was  Napoleon  at  the  Tuileries  among  the  marshals 
of  France,  bestowing  titles  and  ribands  and  crosses, 
compared  with  the  sickly  crook-backed  dwarf  thus 
decorating  his  friends  ?  As  we  read  the  lines  we 
seem  to  be  passing  through  some  lofty  hall  hung 
with  portraits  by  Vandyck.  How  poor  was  the 
coronet  given  to  St.  John  by  the  Queen,  when  set 
side  by  side  with  the  honours  which  Pope  was 
never  tired  of  heaping  on  his  friend  !  The  blue 


1 10  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

riband  of  the  Garter  should  have  seemed  worthless 
to  the  man  to  whom  the  poet  had  written  those 
four  lines  unsurpassed  for  the  splendour  of  the 
compliment : 

"  Oh  !  while  along  the  stream  of  time  thy  name 
Expanded  flies,  and  gathers  all  its  fame  ; 
Say,  shall  my  little  bark  attendant  sail 
Pursue  the  triumph,  and  partake  the  gale  ? ' 


LECTURE 


LECTURE  IV. 
DRYDEN"    himself,    the    poet    of 


"The  varying  verse,  the  full  resounding  line, 
The  long  majestic  march  and  energy  divine," 

the  "  glorious  John  "  of  our  forefathers,  lies  in  even 
deeper  neglect  than  Pope.  Yet  his  genius  was 
probably  greater,  though  his  art  was  certainly  less. 
I  know  of  few  more  manly  writers.  The  reader  who 
has  nourished  himself  on  his  vigorous  genius,  and  his 
strong  common-sense,  supported  and  set  forth  as 
they  are  by  his  learning,  will  have  little  relish  for 
weak  fancy  and  mere  tricks  of  language.  What 
Dryden  might  have  done  had  he  been  as  careful  in 
his  workmanship  as  Pope  we  can  only  imagine.  He 
rose  to  heights  above  the  younger  poet's  flight,  but 
in  his  careless  haste  he  often  sank  far  beneath  him. 
When  he  puts  forth  all  his  strength  how  great  is 
he  !  Who  can  read  unmoved  his  "  Songs  for  St. 
Cecilia's  Day"?  They  rouse  us  as  soldiers  are 

8 


114  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

roused  by  the  sound  of  the  trumpet.  He  was 
daring  enough — and  daring  never  went  to  greater 
heights — to  do  once  more  what  Shakespeare  had 
already  done  pre-eminently  well,  and  to  tell  a 
second  time  the  story  of  Antony  and  Cleopatra. 
He  knew  his  strength,  and  he  has  not  failed. 
Shakespeare's  play  perhaps  ranks  next,  and  only 
next,  to  the  four  great  tragedies, "  Hamlet,"  "  Mac- 
beth," "  King  Lear,"  and  "  Othello."  Nevertheless, 
Dryden's  "  All  for  Love,  or  the  World  Well  Lost," 
even  though  we  have  the  echo  of  the  other  ever  in 
our  ear,  is  a  great  performance.  How  noble  is  the 
passage  where  Antony,  in  an  outburst  of  shame, 
confesses  his  fault : 


"  ANTONY.  I  have  been  a  man,  Ventidius. 

VENTIDIUS.     Yes,  and  a  brave  one  ;  but — 

ANTONY.          I  know  thy  meaning. 

But,  I  have  lost  my  reason,  have  disgraced 
The  name  of  soldier  with  inglorious  ease. 
In  the  full  vintage  of  my  flowing  honours 
Sate  still,  and  saw  it  pressed  by  other  hands. 
Fortune  came  smiling  to  my  youth  and  woo'd 

it, 

And  purpled  greatness  met  my  ripened  years. 
When  first  I  came  to  empire  I  was  borne 
On  tides  of  people,  crowding  to  my  triumphs; 
The  wish  of  nations  ;  and  the  willing  world 
Received  me  as  its  pledge  of  future  peace  ; 
I  was  so  great,  so  happy,  so  beloved, 
Fate  could  not  ruin  me  ;  till  I  took  pains 


IV.— JOHN  DR  YDEN.  \  1 5 

And  worked  against  my  fortune,  chid  her 

from  me, 
And  turned  her  loose  ;  yet  still  she  came 

again. 

My  careless  days  and  my  luxurious  nights 
At  length  have  wearied  her,  and  now  she's 

gone, 
Gone,  gone,  divorced  for  ever." 

How  beautiful  are  the  closing  lines  when  the 
Priest  of  Isis,  before  the  dead  bodies  of  Antony 
and  Cleopatra,  exclaims : 

"  Sleep,  blest  pair, 

Secure  from  human  chance  long  ages  out, 
While  all  the  storms  of  fate  fly  o'er  your  tomb." 

How  fine  are  the  lines  in  "  The  Hind  and  the 
Panther,"  in  which  Dryden  justifies,  or  attempts  to 
justify,  his  conversion  to  the  Church  of  Rome  : — 

"What  weight  of  ancient  witness  can  prevail, 
If  private  reason  hold  the  public  scale  ? 
But,  gracious  God,  how  well  dost  thou  provide 
For  erring  judgments  an  unerring  guide  ! 
Thy  throne  is  darkness  in  the  abyss  of  light, 
A  blaze  of  glory  that  forbids  the  sight ; 
Oh,  teach  me  to  believe  Thee  thus  concealed, 
And  search  no  farther  than  Thyself  revealed ; 
But  her  alone  for  my  director  take, 
Whom  Thou  hast  promised  never  to  forsake  ! 
My  thoughtless  youth  was  winged  with  vain  desires ; 
My  manhood,  long  misled  by  wandering  fires, 
Followed  false  lights  ;  and  when  their  glimpse  was  gone, 
My  pride  struck  out  new  sparkles  of  her  own. 


ii6  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

Such  was  I.  such  by  nature  still  I  am  ; 

Be  thine  the  glory,  and  be  mine  the  shame  ! 

Good  life  be  now  my  task  ;  my  doubts  are  done  ; 

What  more  could  fright  my  faiih,  than  three  in  one?" 

Such  writings  as  these  we  surely  cannot  afford 
to  neglect,  though  they  are  cast  in  a  mould  which 
has  been  long  broken  and  thrown  on  one  side.  I 
remember  hearing  a  story  told  of  a  humorous  old 
painter  who  was  visited  in  his  studio  by  a  young 
gentleman  fresh  from  a  tour  in  Italy.  "  I  have  been 
to  Italy,"  said  the  young  man, "  and,  to  tell  you  the 
truth,  I  don't  see  much  in  it."  His  old  friend  went 
on  quietly  painting,  saying  in  a  low  tone,  as  if  to 
himself,  "Poor  devil!  Been  to  Italy!  Does  not 
see  much  in  Italy  !  Poor  devil !  "  Well,  I  must 
confess  that  in  my  undergraduate  days  contempt 
of  Dryden  and  Pope  I  was  almost  as  poor  a  devil 
as  the  young  gentleman  fresh  from  Italy.  In  truth 
we  are  most  of  us,  at  one  time  or  other  of  our  lives, 
so  many  Dogberrys  in  point  of  literature.  We  are 
proud  of  our  losses.  We  boast,  not  only  that  we 
have  two  gowns  and  everything  handsome  about 
us,  in  other  words,  that  we  can  see  the  beauties  of 
Shelley  and  Browning,  but  that  we  have  had  losses, 
in  other  words,  that  we  have  no  pleasure  in  Dryden 
and  Pope.  I  have  known  a  lad  proud  of  never 
eating  apple-pie.  We  all  know  the  air  with  which 


IV.— LORD  MA  CA  ULA  Y.  117 

a  young  man,  who  is  free  by  a  year  or  two  from  the 
temptations  of  the  toffee-shop,  announces  to  his 
hostess  at  dinner  the  important  fact  that  he  never 
eats  sweets.  If  we  are  to  indulge  in  this  affecta- 
tion, let  us  confine  it  to  the  table,  and  not  let  it 
spread  to  our  bookshelves.  Let  us  never  forget 
that  every  writer  who  has  stood  the  test  of  time 
must  have  in  him  something  good,  and  almost 
certainly  has  something  great  If  we  cannot  dis- 
cover it,  let  us  not  be  unwilling  to  own  to  ourselves 
that  it  is  in  ourselves,  and  not  in  him,  that  the  fault 
lies.  He  who  has  learnt  to  enjoy  a  great  writer,  or 
a  school  of  great  writers,  to  whose  beauties  he  was 
before  insensible,  has  opened  for  himself  a  fresh 
inlet  of  happiness,  and  has  enlarged  the  borders  of 
his  understanding.  Let  me  illustrate  this  by  an 
interesting  passage  from  Sir  George  Trevelyan's 
Life  of  his  uncle,  Lord  Macaulay. 

"  Macaulay  had  a  very  slight  acquaintance  with 
the  works  of  some  among  the  best  writers  of  his  own 
generation.  He  was  not  fond  of  new  lights,  unless 
they  had  been  kindled  at  the  ancient  beacons  ;  and 
he  was  apt  to  prefer  a  third-rate  author,  who  had 
formed  himself  after  some  recognized  model,  to  a 
man  of  high  genius,  whose  style  and  method  were 
strikingly  different  from  anything  that  had  gone 
before.  In  books,  as  in  people  and  places,  he  loved 


Ii8  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

that,  and  that  only,  to  which  he  had  been  accustomed 
from  boyhood  upwards.  Very  few  among  the  stu- 
dents of  Macaulay  will  have  detected  the  intensity 
and  in  some  cases,  it  must  be  confessed,  the  wilful- 
ness,  of  his  literary  conservatism  :  for,  with  the 
instinctive  self-restraint  of  a  great  artist,  he  per- 
mitted no  trace  of  it  to  appear  in  his  writings.  In 
his  character  of  a  responsible  critic,  he  carefully 
abstained  from  giving  expression  to  prejudices  in 
which,  as  a  reader,  he  freely  indulged.  Those 
prejudices  injured  nobody  but  himself;  and  the 
punishment  which  befel  him,  from  the  very  nature 
of  the  case,  was  exactly  proportioned  to  the  offence. 
To  be  blind  to  the  merits  of  a  great  author  is  a  sin 
which  brings  its  own  penalty ;  and,  in  Macaulay 's 
instance,  that  penalty  was  severe  indeed.  Little  as 
he  was  aware  of  it,  it  was  no  slight  privation  that 
one  who  had  by  heart  the  *  Battle  of  Marathon,'  as 
told  by  Herodotus,  and  the  '  Raising  of  the  Siege 
of  Syracuse/  as  told  by  Thucydides,  should  have 
passed  through  life  without  having  felt  the  glow 
which  Mr.  Carlyle's  story  of  the  charge  across  the 
ravine  at  Dunbar  could  not  fail  to  awake  even  in  a 
Jacobite  ;  that  one  who  so  keenly  relished  the 
exquisite  trifling  of  Plato  should  never  have  tasted 
the  description  of  Coleridge's  talk  in  the  '  Life  of 
John  Sterling'  ;  that  one  who  eagerly  and  minutely 


IV—  L ORD  MA  CA  ULA  Y.  119 

studied  all  that  Lessing  has  written  on  art,  or 
Goethe  on  poetry,  should  have  left  unread  Mr. 
Ruskin's  comparison  between  the  landscape  of  the 
1  Odyssey '  and  the  landscape  of  the  '  Divine 
Comedy,'  or  his  analysis  of  the  effect  produced  on 
the  imagination  by  long  continued  familiarity  with 
the  aspect  of  the  '  Campanile '  of  Giotto." 

Sir  George  Trevelyan,  after  thus  forcibly  pointing 
out  his  famous  uncle's  losses,  goes  on  to  make 
them  of  very  little  moment.  He  says  : 

"  Great  beyond  all  question,  was  the  intellectual 
enjoyment  that  Macaulay  forfeited  by  his  unwilling- 
ness to  admit  the  excellence  of  anything  which  had 
been  written  in  bold  defiance  of  the  old  canons;  but, 
heavy  as  the  sacrifice  was,  he  could  readily  afford 
to  make  it.  With  his  omnivorous  and  insatiable 
appetite  for  books  there  was,  indeed,  little  danger 
that  he  would  ever  be  at  a  loss  for  something  to 
read."  ' 

Is  there,  then,  nothing  but  a  loss  of  enjoyment 
in  such  a  state  of  mind  as  this  ?  Is  that  all  the 
sacrifice  that  was  made?  Did  Macaulay  lose 
nothing  by  not  attempting  to  understand  two 
writers  who  have  so  deeply  touched  and  even 
changed  the  thoughts  of  men  ?  It  is  too  early  to 
estimate  the  influence  which  Mr.  Carlyle  and  Mr. 
1  "  Life  of  Lord  Macaulay,''  ii.  463. 


120  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

Ruskin  have  exerted  on  their  time.  That  can 
only  be  done  by  thinkers  scarcely  yet  born  ;  but 
that  their  influence  has  been  great,  I  might  almost 
say  vast,  can  hardly  be  denied.  To  all  this  influence, 
though  it  was  working  all  around,  Macaulay  was  in- 
sensible. It  was  his  proud  hope  and  noble  ambition 
that  he  was  writing  for  far  distant  ages.  "  I  have 
aimed  high,"  he  writes,  in  speaking  of  his  "  History 
of  England  "  ;  "I  have  tried  to  do  something  that 
may  be  remembered  ;  I  have  had  the  year  2000, 
and  even  the  year  3000  often  in  my  mind.  I  have 
sacrificed  nothing  to  temporary  fashions  of  thought 
and  style."  Eight  years  later  he  wrote,  just  after 
the  publication  of  the  third  and  fourth  volumes, 
"  The  victory  is  won.  The  book  has  not  disap- 
pointed the  very  highly  raised  expectations  of  the 
public.  The  first  fortnight  was  the  time  of  peril. 
Now  all  is  safe." x  Surely  when  he  wrote  these 
triumphant  words  the  far  out-look  on  the  distant 
centuries  must  have  been  closed  to  him  for  a  time. 
He  needed  some  Solon  to  read  to  him  the  lesson 
that  was  read  to  the  Lydian  King,  and  to  tell  him 
that  between  the  years  1856  and  3000  there  were 
29,744  fortnights, "  whereof  not  one  but  will  produce 
events  unlike  the  rest"  Schools  of  style,  of  thought, 
of  feeling,  will  rise  and  pass  away,  and  time  will  go 
1  "  Life  of  Lord  Macaulay,"  ii.  247,  392. 


IV.-IMPERFECT  SYMPATHIES.  121 

on,  as  time  ever  has  gone  on,  endlessly  sifting  the 
works  of  men,  and  casting  on  one  side  among  the 
rubbish  of  the  centuries  much  that  is  good,  much  that 
is  beautiful,  much  even  that  bears  the  mark  of  high 
and  noble  genius,  but  which  reflects  too  faithfully 
the  age  in  which  it  was  written,  and  too  little  the 
common  feelings  of  all  mankind.  Had  Macaulay 
been  able  to  enter  into  the  thoughts  of  men  whose 
genius  was  eccentric  as  well  as  great  ;  who,  to  use 
Johnson's  phrase,  "  delight  to  tread  upon  the  brink 
of  meaning,"  the  shout  of  the  first  fortnight  would, 
I  believe,  have  been  far  less  loud,  but  the  echo 
might  have  rolled  from  age  to  age.  For  if  any- 
thing is  fatal  to  his  fame,  it  will  be  this  imperfect 
sympathy  of  his  with  men  who  did  not,  to  use 
Carlyle's  humorous  phrase,  agree  with  him  in  look- 
ing upon  the  Divine  government  of  the  world  as 
a  limited  whig  monarchy.  Had  he,  in  the  vast 
sweep  of  his  reading,  been  able  with  understanding 
and  sympathy  to  study  the  works  of  writers  to 
whom,  by  the  constitution  of  his  mind,  he  was  most 
strongly  opposed,  then  we  might  with  good  and 
reasonable  hope  have  joined  in  the  proud  thought 
that  men  who  are  separated  from  us  by  a  greater 
interval  of  time  than  we  are  separated  from  King 
Alfred,  will  delight  in  our  great  historian,  who,  with 
all  his  failings,  is  certainly  one  of  the  chief  glories 


122  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

of  his  age.  But  I  find  few  traces  in  his  writings  or 
his  "  Life  "  that  he  was  aware  of  the  need  under 
which  we  all  lie,  of  trying  to  understand  those  with 
whom  by  nature  we  are  most  at  variance,  and  of 
trying  by  their  perfections  to  piece  our  imperfec- 
tions. "  Unto  the  Jews  a  stumbling-block,  and 
unto  the  Greeks  foolishness"  is  a  text  that  can  be 
applied  in  literature  as  well  as  in  religion.  George 
Fox,  the  Quaker,  was  to  Macaulay  a  stumbling- 
block  and  a  foolishness,  and  so  was  James  Boswell, 
and  so  even,  in  some  respects,  was  Samuel  Johnson. 
I  can  never  read  his  famous  article  in  the  Edinburgh 
Review  on  Boswell's  "  Life  of  Johnson  "  without  a 
feeling  of  amazement  that,  with  all  its  brilliancy,  it 
could  have  been  written  by  a  man  who  was  thirty 
years  of  age.  In  its  gross  ignorance  of  human 
nature  it  was  scarcely  worthy  even  of  a  hopeful  lad, 
a  scholar  of  Balliol,  or  of  Trinity  College,  Cam- 
bridge, in  his  freshman's  year. 

The  temptations  to  which  the  clever  young 
students  of  the  present  age  are  exposed  are  very 
different  from  those  which  beset  our  fathers  and  our 
grandfathers.  There  is  no  fear  at  present  lest 
common  sense  should  be  set  up  as  the  image 
before  which  we  are  all  to  fall  down  and  worship. 
The  path  which  leads  to  the  shrine  of  that  deity 
seems  likely  to  become  a  little  grass-grown.  In 


IV.— SUBTLE  THINKERS.  123 

a  college  common  room  in  this  university  I 
happened  to  observe  that  there  never  had  been, 
I  believed,  a  time  in  which  men  who  knew  so 
much  wrote  so  ill.  Every  age,  I  said,  has  its 
affectations,  but  the  peculiarity  of  this  age  was, 
that  men  of  some  learning — learning  at  all 
events  which  had  been  decorated  with  high  uni- 
versity distinctions,  with  first-classes,  with  prizes, 
with  fellowships — that  men  so  distinguished  often 
wrote  nonsense — flowery  nonsense  it  might  be,  but 
none  the  less  nonsense.  A  young  man  in  the 
company  replied  that  men  now-a-days  were  so 
much  more  subtle  in  their  thoughts  that  language 
failed  them,  and  that  it  was  not  they,  but  the  im- 
perfections of  our  tongue  that  were  at  fault.  It 
may  be  so ;  but,  nevertheless,  I  shall  not  easily  be 
persuaded  that  this  English  of  ours  which,  in  the 
hands  of  so  many  mighty  poets  and  thinkers  and 
writers  of  every  style,  has  been  a  perfect  and  most 
beautiful  instrument,  answering  the  master's  touch, 
whatever  note  he  struck,  however  high  or  however 
low,  is  too  imperfect  for  these  modern  thinkers. 
As  we  see  Shakespeare  play  upon  it  we  feel  as 
Jubal's  brethren  felt 

"  When  Jubal  struck  the  chorded  shell, 
His  listening  brethren  stood  around, 
And  wondering  on  their  faces  fell 


124  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

To  worship  that  celestial  sound  : 

Less  than  a  God  they  thought  there  could  not  dwell 

Within  the  hollow  of  that  shell, 

That  spoke  so  sweetly  and  so  well." 

And  now  this  "  chorded  shell "  is  not  good 
enough  for  our  subtle  thinkers  !  I  see  no  such 
predominance  of  thought  in  my  contemporaries 
as  can  justify  the  haze  in  which  they  are  so  often 
enveloped.  He  who  thinks  clearly  writes  clearly 
in  all  ages  of  the  world.  When  I  think  of  the 
redundancy  and  the  folly  of  the  words  by  which 
many  of  our  popular  writers  seem  both  to  give 
pleasure  to  their  readers  and  to  fill  their  own 
pockets,  I  can  easily  fancy  that  when  they  were 
launched  into  the  world  their  Genius  addressed 
them  as  the  Host  in  the  "  Merry  Wives  of  Wind- 
sor "  addresses  Bardolph,  when  he  engages  him  as 
tapster :  "  Let  me  see  thee  froth  and  live."  Surely 
these  authors  are  the  very  tapsters  of  literature. 
Their  whole  art  consists  in  serving  up  poor  liquor 
with  what  is  called,  in  the  slang  of  the  tavern  bar, 
a  head  to  it :  they  do  indeed  froth  and  live  !  How 
admirable,  by  the  way,  is  Falstaff's  indignation  in 
the  same  play  when  he  is  mocked  by  Sir  Hugh 
Evans  !  "  Seese  and  putter  !  have  I  lived  to  stand 
in  the  taunt  of  one  that  makes  fritters  of  English?" 
Fritters  now-a-days  are  made  of  English  by  men 


1V.-WRITING  IN  TRACK.  125 

who  have  not  the  excuse  of  the  honest  Welsh 
parson — men  to  whom  "  Chatham's  language  is 
their  mother  tongue," — men  who  have  studied 
letters  in  a  great  university. 

There  is,  I  suppose,  scarcely  a  single  age  to  be 
found  in  which  the  writers  of  all  classes  below  the 
first  are  entirely  free  from  affectation  :  "  We  not 
only  think  in  track,"  as  Goldsmith  said  ;  but  we 
write  in  track.  Among  "the  depravations  in  the 
republic  of  letters  "  he  places  first  "  affectation  in 
some  popular  writer  leading  others  into  vicious 
imitation."  At  the  time  when  he  wrote  this  there 
was  setting  in  a  vicious  imitation  of  Johnson's 
style.  A  young  student  of  Queen's  College  has 
left  a  curious  account  of  the  lectures  given  in 
Oxford  in  the  year  1779  by  Dr.  Scott,  at  that  time 
a  Fellow  of  University  College,  and  Professor  of 
Ancient  History,  but  afterwards  the  famous  Judge 
of  the  Admiralty  Court  and  Lord  Stowell.  "  Scott 
is  intimate  with  Dr.  Johnson,"  the  young  student 
writes,  "  and  has  a  good  deal  of  his  manner : 
elevated  style,  pointed  antithesis,  rounded  periods, 
moral  and  penetrating  remarks.  Sometimes,  how- 
ever, he  copies  the  Doctor's  faults,  such  as  his 
turgid  expressions,  and  that  care  to  avoid  the 
mention  of  anything  mean  or  familiar  by  its  com- 
mon name.  This  is  a  grand  source  of  burlesque. 


126  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

For  how  does  a  man  stare  when  at  the  bottom  of  a 
grand-sounding  sentence  he  discovers  what  is  as 
well  known  to  him  by  its  usual  appellation  as  his 
gloves  or  his  pocket  handkerchief.  This  was 
sometimes  the  case  with  our  lecturer,  when  he 
was  forced  to  descend  to  familiar  topics.  He 
turned,  doubled,  and  practised  all  the  windings  of 
a  hunted  hare,  in  order  to  avoid  that  odious  word 
butter  or  cheese,  and  talked  with  great  ingenuity 
about  shoes  for  several  minutes  without  naming 
them.  Describing  the  houses  of  the  Athenians  he 
acquainted  his  audience  'that  they  had  no  con- 
venience by  which  the  volatile  parts  of  fire  could 
be  conveyed  into  the  open  air.'  How  would  a 
bricklayer  stare  at  being  told  that  he  meant  no 
more  than  that  the  Athenians  had  no  chimneys ! 
One  great  inconvenience  attended  this  constant 
and  studied  elevation,  for  whenever  he  popped 
out  a  familiar  word,  for  which  it  was  impossible  to 
substitute  a  synonym,  it  came  from  him  with  as 
ill  a  grace  as  an  oath  would  from  a  bishop,  or  the 
language  of  Billingsgate  from  a  fine  lady." J  John- 
son, I  may  remark,  would  not  have  hesitated  for 
one  moment  to  call  shoes,  shoes,  and  a  chimney  a 
chimney.  He  tells  us  of  Milton's  pipe  of  tobacco, 

1  Goldsmith's  "  Present  State  of  Polite  Learning,"  chap, 
iv.,  xi.  ;  "  Letters  of  Radcliffe  and  James,*  p.  92. 


IV.— FASHIONS  IN  STYLE.  127 

and  of  the  silver  saucepan  to  which  Pope's  death 
was  imputed.  He  could  call  a  spade  a  spade  as 
well  as  any  man. 

More  than  twenty  years  after  Dr.  Scott  had  thus 
amused  the  undergraduates  of  Oxford,  Dugald 
Stewart,  the  great  rhetorical  philosopher,  gave  his 
first  course  of  lectures  on  Political  Economy  at 
Edinburgh.  "  It  was  not  unusual,"  says  one  who 
was  present,  "  to  see  a  smile  on  the  face  of  some 
when  they  heard  subjects  discoursed  upon  seem- 
ingly beneath  the  dignity  of  the  academical  chair. 
The  word  corn  sounded  strangely  in  the  moral 
class,  and  draivbacks  seemed  a  profanation  of 
Stewart's  voice."  J 

When  at  length  the  vicious  imitation  of  John- 
son's style  ceased  to  be  fashionable,  the  world  was 
none  the  freer  from  affectation.  Goldsmith  would 
still  have  found  a  depravation  in  the  republic  of 
letters.  One  hundred  years  or  so  after  he  uttered 
his  complaint  most  of  the  young  authors  were 
under  the  influence  of  a  man  as  unlike  Johnson 
in  his  style  as  he  was  like  him  in  his  sturdy  inde- 
pendency, his  fearlessness,  his  truthfulness,  his 
rugged  tenderness,  and  his  natural  piety — Thomas 
Carlyle.  Now  I  would  apply  to  Carlyle's  style  a 
passage  in  which  Macaulay  describes  his  own.  "  I 
1  Cockburn's  "  Memorials  of  his  Time,"  p.  174. 


128  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

looked,"  he  records  in  his  diary,  "  through  's  * 

two  volumes.  He  is,  I  see,  an  imitator  of  me.  But 
I  am  a  very  unsafe  model.  My  manner  is,  I  think, 
and  the  world  thinks,  on  the  whole  a  good  one  ; 
but  it  is  very  near  to  a  very  bad  manner  indeed, 
and  those  characteristics  of  my  style  which  are 
most  easily  copied  are  the  most  questionable." 2 
Whatever  may  be  the  merits  of  Carlyle's  style — 
and  that  it  has  great  merit  most  men  allow,  even 
those  who  most  clearly  see  the  great  faults  by 
which  it  is  marred — it  is  certainly  true  of  it  also 
"  that  those  characteristics  which  are  most  easily 
copied  are  the  most  questionable."  Sir  George 
Trevelyan  regretted,  as  you  have  seen,  that  his 
uncle  could  not  relish  Carlyle's  descriptive  writings. 
Much  as  I  have  enjoyed  them  myself,  I  have  been 
sometimes  inclined  to  think  that  in  the  long  run 
they  have  caused  me  more  misery  than  pleasure. 
It  was  my  fortune  for  many  a  year  to  be  a  Satur- 
day Reviewer — one  before  whose  judgment-seat 
passed  a  great  variety  of  writers,  most  of  them,  I 
regret  to  say,  criminals  more  or  less  guilty  ;  worthy 
if  not  of  death,  at  least  of  stripes.  I  look  back 
even  now,  when  they  trouble  me  no  longer,  with  a 
kind  of  horror  on  the  word-painters,  as,  I  suppose, 

1  Mr.  Froude,  I  conjecture. 

•  "  Life  of  Lord  Macaulay,"  ii.,  456. 


IV.— CARLYLE  AND  RUSKIN.  I2y 

they  may  justly  be  called,  for  their  worthless  art  is 
called  word-painting. 

Carlyle,  with  all  the  power  of  a  great  master, 
has  described  the  field  of  Dunbar  or  "the  beach 
of  Kirkaldy  in  summer  twilights,  a  mile  of  the 
smoothest  sand,  with  one  long  wave  coming  on 
gently,  steadily,  and  breaking  in  gradual  explosion 
into  harmless  melodious  white,  at  your  hand  all 
the  way  ;  the  break  of  it  rushing  along  like  a  mane 
of  foam,  beautifully  sounding  and  advancing." x 
Mr.  Ruskin,  lecturing  at  Edinburgh,  thus  brings 
before  the  mind's  eye  a  distant  city  of  Italy  : 

"  Now  I  remember  a  city,  more  nobly  placed 
even  than  your  Edinburgh,  which,  instead  of  the 
valley  that  you  have  now  filled  by  lines  of  railroad, 
has  a  broad  and  rushing  river  of  blue  water  sweep- 
ing through  the  heart  of  it ;  which,  for  the  dark 
and  solitary  rock  that  bears  your  castle,  has  an 
amphitheatre  of  cliffs  crested  with  cypresses  and 
olive  ;  which,  for  the  two  masses  of  Arthur's  Seat 
and  the  ranges  of  the  Pentlands,  has  a  chain  of 
blue  mountains  higher  than  the  haughtiest  peaks  of 
your  Highlands  ;  and  which,  for  your  far-away  Ben 
Ledi  and  Ben  More,  has  the  great  central  chain  of 
the  St.  Gothard  Alps :  and  yet  as  you  go  out  of 
the  gates,  and  walk  in  the  suburban  streets  of  that 
1  "  Reminiscences  of  Thomas  Carlyle,"  i.  104. 
9 


130  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

city — I  mean  Verona — the  eye  never  seeks  to  rest 
on  that  external  scenery,  however  gorgeous  ;  it 
does  not  look  for  the  gaps  between  the  houses,  as 
you  do  here  ;  it  may  for  a  few  moments  follow 
the  broken  line  of  the  great  Alpine  battlements  ; 
but  it  is  only  where  they  form  a  background  for 
other  battlements,  built  by  the  hand  of  man. 
There  is  no  necessity  felt  to  dwell  on  the  blue 
river  or  the  burning  hills.  The  heart  and  eye 
have  enough  to  do  in  the  streets  of  the  city  itself; 
they  are  contented  there  ;  nay,  they  sometimes 
turn  from  the  natural  scenery,  as  if  too  savage  and 
solitary,  to  dwell  with  a  deeper  interest  on  the 
palace  walls  that  cast  their  shade  upon  the  streets, 
and  the  crowd  of  towers  that  rise  out  of  that 
shadow  into  the  depth  of  the  sky."  x 

The  art  of  Carlyle  and  Ruskin,  because  of  its 
ease,  seems  easy  ;  and  so  a  host  of  servile  imitators 
spring  up  like  mushrooms  in  a  September  night. 
Everything  is  described  in  the  heavens  above,  or 
in  the  earth  beneath,  or  in  the  waters  under  the 
earth,  and  is  described  at  a  length  that  justifies 
the  suspicion  that  the  payment,  as  indeed  often  is 
the  case,  is  at  the  rate  of  penny-a-line  more  or  less. 
Description  runs  mad,  and  vulgarly  mad  ;  for  the 
infinitely  little  and  the  infinitely  base  are  painted 

1  "  Lectures  on  Architecture  and  Painting,"  ed.  1855,  p.  3. 


IV.— DESCRIPTIVE  WRITING.  131 

with  words  as  many  and  as  fine  as  the  beautiful 
and  the  sublime.  How  often,  as  I  have  toiled 
through  the  piled-up  epithets,  each  substantive 
duly  supported  by  its  triplet  of  adjectives,  and 
each  verb  by  at  least  a  brace  of  adverbs,  while  the 
writer  is  painting  perchance  the  beginning  of 
spring,  have  I  called  to  mind  the  master-touches 
in  which  in  two  lines  the  poet  does  what  these 
word-painters  fail  to  do  in  twice  two  hundred : 


"He  felt  the  cheering  power  of  spring, 
It  made  him  whistle,  it  made  him  sing." 


Do  we  ask  for  a  picture  of  a  spring  day  ?  This 
single  couplet  at  once  brings  the  April  in  our  eyes. 
Let  me  quote  a  passage  from  a  writer  who  as- 
suredly had  very  little  observation  of  the  face  of 
nature,  and  whose  powers  of  description  were 
therefore  small,  to  show  you  in  how  few  words, 
when  they  are  well  chosen,  a  wild  and  striking 
scene  may  be  brought  before  us.  Dr.  Johnson  is 
describing  his  ride  on  a  wild  and  stormy  night  of 
late  autumn  through  the  Highlands  of  Argyle. 

"  The  wind  was  loud,  the  rain  was  heavy,  and 
the  whistling  of  the  blast,  the  fall  of  the  shower, 
the  rush  of  the  cataracts,  and  the  roar  of  the 
torrent,  made  a  nobler  chorus  of  the  rough  music 


132  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

of  nature  than  it  had  ever  been  my  chance  to  hear 
before."  « 

What  better  description  of  a  wild  mountain  ride 
could  we  have  had  even  though  the  writer  had 
heaped  up  his  words  as  if  he  were  piling  Ossa  on 
Pelion,  and  leafy  Olympus  on  Ossa  ? 

Goldsmith,  in  the  humorous  account  which  he 
gave  to  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  of  the  arrival  of  him- 
self and  his  friends  at  Calais,  says  :  "  Upon  landing 
two  little  trunks,  which  was  all  we  carried  with  us, 
we  were  surprised  to  see  fourteen  or  fifteen  fellows 
all  running  down  to  the  ship  to  lay  their  hands 
upon  them  ;  four  got  under  each  trunk,  the  rest 
surrounded  and  held  the  hasps  ;  and  in  this  manner 
our  little  baggage  was  conducted  with  a  kind  of 
funeral  solemnity  till  it  was  safely  lodged  at  the 
Custom-house."  2  Now  the  words  of  many  of  the 
modern  descriptive  writers  bear  much  the  same  re- 
lation to  the  thoughts  which  they,  as  it  were  convey, 
as  these  Calais  porters  bore  to  the  luggage.  There 
is  a  struggling  procession  of  substantives,  adjectives, 
verbs,  and  adverbs,  all  bustling  along,  knocking 
one  against  the  other,  tripping  over  one  another's 
heels,  stunning  the  ears  with  a  confused  din,  bear- 

1  Southey's  "  Inchcape  Bell";   Johnson's  "Works,"  ix. 

155. 
*  Forster's  "  Life  of  Goldsmith,"  ed.  1871,  ii.  216. 


IV.—  WORD  PAINTERS.  133 

ing  along  in  triumph  a  couple  of  empty  band-boxes. 
I  have  one  great  hope  that  this  word-painting  will 
have  but  a  brief  existence,  and  "  with  all  its  trum- 
pery "  will  pass  away  for  ever.  "  Tis,"  as  Hamlet 
says,  "  as  easy  as  lying,"  and  so  can  be  practised 
by  every  one.  It  is  the  kind  of  stuff  that  "  a  man 
might  write  for  ever,  if  he  would  abandon  his 
mind  to  it"  Since  then  every  man,  every  woman, 
and  every  child  can  become  his  own  word-painter, 
the  art  must  cease  to  be  profitable.  Moreover, 
happily,  in  every  case  there  does  come  at  length  a 
surfeit  of  bad  taste.  The  world  may  remain  as 
foolish  as  ever  ;  the  common  stock  of  folly  may 
keep  as  large  as  ever,  whatever  changes  may  take 
place ;  folly,  as  Horace  Walpole  says,  may  be 
matter,  and,  therefore,  cannot  be  annihilated ; 
nevertheless,  a  change  the  world  will  have,  even 
though  it  is  only  a  change  of  foolishness.  It  is 
my  hope,  my  confident  hope,  therefore,  that  from 
word-painting  the  land  will  soon  have  rest ;  if  not 
for  ever,  nevertheless,  for  a  period  far  exceeding 
in  length  the  scriptural  one  of  forty  years.  That 
this  blessed  time  may  the  sooner  begin,  let  me  beg 
you  one  and  all  to  make  a  vow  of  abstinence  from 
the  use  of  the  dozen  or  two  of  epithets  with  which 
these  word-painters  mix  all  their  colours.  Try  to 
pass  a  whole  twelvemonth  without  so  much  as 


134  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

once  writing,  or  even  uttering,  sheen  and  sheer, 
shimmer  and  subtle  and  weird  and  opalescent 
and  glint  and  the  rest.  Your  mothers  and  your 
grandmothers  got  through  life  comfortably  enough 
without  the  use  of  any  one  of  them.  Do  not  have 
the  reproach  cast  on  you  which  was  cast  on  the 
schoolmaster  and  the  curate  in  "  Love's  Labour 
Lost " — "  They  have  been  at  a  great  feast  of 
languages  and  stole  the  scraps."  Do  not  be  con- 
tent to  live  "  on  the  alms-basket  of  words."  Lay 
to  heart  the  advice  which  Charles  Lamb  gave  to 
a  friend  who  had  sent  him  his  poems :  "  If  you 
count,"  he  wrote,  "you  will  wonder  how  many 
times  you  have  repeated  the  word  unearthly; 
thrice  in  one  poem.  It  is  become  a  slang  word 
with  the  bards  ;  avoid  it  in  future  lustily."  * 

There  will  also  be  before  long,  I  trust,  a  return 
to  that  clearness  of  writing  which  was  perhaps  the 
most  distinguishing  mark  of  the  writers  of  the 
eighteenth  century — a  clearness  which  was  due 
mainly  to  clear  thinking,  but  partly  also  to  the 
trouble  which  they  took  to  write  clearly.  Of  style 
they  made  a  careful  and  even  a  laborious  study. 
"  How  little,"  wrote  Macaulay  more  than  forty  years 
ago,  "how  little  the  all-important  art  of  making 
meaning  pellucid  is  studied  now !  Hardly  any 
1  "  Letters  of  Charles  Lamb,"  ed.  A.  Ainger,  ii.  107. 


IV.— MA  CA  ULA  Y'S  STYLE.  135 

popular  writer,  except  myself,  thinks  of  it.  Many 
seem  to  aim  at  being  obscure.  Indeed,  they  may 
be  right  enough  in  one  sense,  for  many  readers 
give  credit  for  profundity  to  whatever  is  obscure, 
and  call  all  that  is  perspicuous  shallow.  But 
coraggio!  and  think  of  A.D.  2850.  Where  will  your 
Emersons  be  then  ?  But  Herodotus  will  still  be 
read  with  delight  We  must  do  our  best  to  be 
read  too."  x 

Macaulay  often  fell  into  the  opposite  error,  and 
wrote  too  clearly,  for  he  leaves  nothing  for  his 
readers  to  do  but  understand  him  without  the 
slightest  exertion  on  their  part  He  never  goes 
shares  with  them,  to  use  Charles  Lamb's  expres- 
sion. He  writes  like  a  skilled  rhetorician  who, 
when  addressing  an  audience,  does  not  hesitate  to 
repeat  himself,  so  long  as  he  varies  the  words, 
knowing  well  that  either  through  inattention  or 
stupidity  much  of  what  he  says  would  be  otherwise 
lost.  What  may  be  a  merit  in  a  spoken  speech  is 
a  defect  in  a  written  book.  Macaulay's  conde- 
scending clearness  becomes  at  times  very  tedious. 
When  we  have  once  firmly  grasped  the  fact  that 
two  and  two  make  four,  we  do  not  care  to  be  told 
that  by  the  addition  of  two  and  two  is  composed 
the  fourth  numeral.  The  obscurity  under  which 
1  "  Life  of  Lord  Macaulay,"  ii.  273. 


136  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

we  are  now  suffering  differs  not  a  little  from  that 
of  which  Macaulay  complained.  The  writers  whom 
he  attacked  affected  a  depth  of  thought — German 
thought,  if  I  may  so  term  it — which  in  its  own 
nature,  they  maintained,  could  not  but  be  obscure. 
We  have  still,  as  I  have  shown,  this  pretence  of 
thinking  beyond  the  powers  of  clear  utterance  ; 
but  added  to  it,  we  have  a  profusion  of  epithets — 
apparently  often  chosen  at  random,  and  pitched 
into  the  midst  of  the  sentence  for  their  picturesque- 
ness,  not  for  any  meaning  that  they  have  or  purpose 
that  they  serve.  At  their  best  they  are  but 

"  Rich  windows  that  exclude  the  light ; " 
at  their  worst  they  are 

"  Passages  that  lead  to  nothing." 

Even  those  authors  who  manage  this  modern  style 
best  fatigue  by  their  very  brilliancy.  A  brilliant 
writer  indeed  tries  poor  human  patience  almost  as 
much  as  a  brilliant  performer  on  the  pianoforte. 
How  good  was  the  advice  given  by  "  the  old  tutor 
of  a  college  to  one  of  his  pupils — "  Read  over  your 
compositions,  and  wherever  you  meet  with  a  passage 
which  you  think  is  particularly  fine,  strike  it  out"  * 
But  in  this  particular  brilliant  style  which  I  am 

1  Boswell's  "  Life  of  Johnson,"  ii.  237. 


IV.— BRILLIANT  WRITERS.  137 

attacking  there  is  nothing  but  bright-coloured 
patches — nothing  but  shreds  of  purpureus  pannus 
stitched  together  after  the  fashion  of  a  coverlet  that 
is  made  up  by  piecing  together  the  gaudiest  snip- 
pings,  the  gatherings  of  many  years.  Every  thread 
of  every  patch  is  made  as  bright  as  the  brightest. 
There  is  nothing  but  glare.  I  would  as  soon  walk 
along  the  eastern  bank  of  a  stream  in  the  late 
afternoon  of  an  unclouded  day  in  summer,  and  be 
distressed  by  the  dazzling  reflection  of  the  sinking 
sun  in  the  water  as  read  such  writers  as  these. 
There  is  no  good  to  be  got  from  them.  To  write 
fine  passages,  such  as  those  which  the  old  tutor 
told  his  pupil  to  strike  out,  may  be  a  useful  exer- 
cise ;  for  from  the  practice  of  rhetoric  comes  a 
facility  of  writing.  I  hold,  indeed,  that  a  young 
man  gives  not  a  little  promise  as  a  writer,  who  in 
the  first  draft  often  writes  finely,  but  who  in  the 
revision  has  good  taste  enough  to  detect  the  tinsel, 
and  courage  enough  to  rip  it  off.  But  when  all 
is  brilliancy,  then  nothing  can  be  cut  away.  The 
whole  must  go  or  nothing. 

Nourished  as  I  have  chiefly  been  on  writers  of 
a  very  different  school  from  those  who  are  the 
favourites  of  the  present  day,  I  may  see  too  clearly 
and  attack  too  strongly  the  faults  of  a  school  which 
I  detest.  Nevertheless,  I  cannot  be  wrong  when  I 


133 


WRITERS  AND  READERS. 


maintain  that  as  every  age  of  writers  has  faults,  and 
faults  peculiar  to  itself,  he  who  wishes  to  write  well 
must  study  writers  of  different  ages  and  widely 
different  styles.  A  language,  like  a  country  in 
unsettled  times,  is  threatened  on  all  sides  with 
constant  invasions ;  but  it  has  this  great  danger 
added  that  the  young  recruits  are  too  apt  to  turn 
deserters,  and  not  only  to  throw  open  the  gates  to 
the  invaders  who  are  pouring  in,  but  even  to  deck 
themselves  with  their  foreign  badges.  We  are 
often  blinded,  moreover,  to  that  duty  which  we 
owe  to  our  noble  language  by  some  of  our  best 
affections.  We  see  so  strongly  the  merits  of  some 
great  teacher  that  we  refuse  to  see  his  faults. 
"  We  cannot  love  without  imitating,"  says  Landor ; 
"  and  we  are  as  proud  in  the  loss  of  our  originality 
as  of  our  freedom."  z  "I  have  such  a  love  for  Mr. 
Ruskin,"  said  an  earnest  student  to  a  friend  of 
mine,  "that  even  when  I  know  that  what  he  writes 
is  absurd,  I  do  my  best  not  to  see  it."  "  Amicus 
Plato,  sed  magis  arnica  veritas."  Mr.  Ruskin  is 
is  doubtless  dear,  but  truth  should  be  still  dearer. 
The  only  safeguard  against  this  excessive,  this 
superstitious  hero-worship,  is  to  be  found  in  the 
number  and  in  the  diversity  of  our  heroes.  He 
who  enjoys  a  great  variety  of  styles  is  much  less 
1  "  Pericles  and  Aspasia,"  ed.  by  C.  G.  Crump,  i.  69. 


IV.—  THE  STUDY  OF  STYLE.  139 

likely  to  fall  into  the  faults  of  any  single  one. 
Had  we  lived  a  hundred  years  ago,  while  we 
studied  in  the  "  Rambler "  or  the  "  Lives  of  the 
Poets"  the  force,  the  clearness,  and  the  cadence 
which  had  been  given  to  our  language  by  Johnson, 
we  should,  if  we  were  wise,  have  carefully  guarded 
ourselves  against  a  mode  of  composition  which  was 
essentially  faulty, to  whose  fascinations,  nevertheless, 
some  great  writers  yielded  far  too  much.  In  fact, 
we  should  have  done  well  to  follow  Johnson's  own 
advice  when  he  says  that  "  whoever  wishes  to  attain 
an  English  style,  familiar  but  not  coarse,  and  ele- 
gant but  not  ostentatious,  must  give  his  days  and 
nights  to  the  volumes  of  Addison."1 

The  advice  which  I  am  giving  is,  I  am  well 
aware,  by  no  means  easy /to  follow.  We  have  our 
prejudices  against  us,  and,  as  I  have  said,  our 
affections  too.  We  do  not  easily  mingle  minds 
with  those  from  whom  we  are  widely  different.  In 
our  youth  we  are  hero-worshippers,  and  when  age 
begins  to  steal  upon  us  the  indolence  of  the  growing 
years  whispers  to  us  that  the  study  of  new  schools 
of  thought  is  certainly  hard,  and  not  certainly  pro- 
fitable. Yet  the  effort  must  be  made.  Taste  can 
be  ruined,  and  on  the  ruins  of  taste  countless  are 
the  evils  which  spring  up  and  thrive. 
1  Johnson's  "  Works,"  vii.  473. 


LECTURE    V. 


LECTURE  V. 

IN  this  lecture  and  my  next  I  wish  to  examine 
the  part  which  the  study  of  literature  should 
play  in  education.  What  is  our  chief,  our  highest 
aim  I  would  ask,  in  the  education  which  we  give  to 
the  young,  and  which,  if  we  are  wise,  we  never  cease 
to  give  to  ourselves  ?  It  is  a  question  to  which  a 
different  answer  is  far  too  commonly  given  now 
from  what  was  given  of  old.  The  world  is  looked 
upon  as  a  vast  battle-field  in  which  the  exceeding 
great  reward  is  not  the  inner  life  nobly  lived,  but 
the  outer  life  nobly  recompensed.  It  is  not  a 
race  against  ourselves,  but  a  race  against  outsiders. 
It  is  not  a  race  where  all  who  run,  if  they  have 
laboriously  trained  themselves  are  sure  of  a  prize, 
but  one  in  which  the  runners  are  many  and  the 
prizes  few.  The  child,  the  boy,  the  young  man  are 
not  taught  that  their  chief  competitors  are  them- 


144  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

selves.  It  is  not  themselves  but  their  companions 
that  they  must  strive  to  overcome.  As  if  this  strife 
were  not  enough  we  are  terrified  by  the  sound  01' 
foreign  competition.  Unless  our  children  are 
taught  the  natural  sciences,  French  and  German, 
shorthand,  and  what  not,  we  shall  be  beaten  out  of 
all  the  markets  of  the  world.  The  laborious  Ger- 
mans have  already  supplanted  us,  we  are  told,  in 
many  a  distant  mart ;  the  manufactures  of  England 
must  dwindle  away  because  our  lads  know  nothing 
of  chemistry,  while  the  ignorance  of  our  commer- 
cial travellers  and  clerks  of  modern  languages  will 
make  the  sun  of  England's  glory  set  The  day 
will  come  before  long  when  it  will  be  said  that : 

"  She  whom  mighty  nations  curtsied  to, 
Like  a  forlorn  and  desperate  castaway 
Did  shameful  execution  on  herself," 

by  her  neglect  of  what  is  vulgarly  known  as  the 
modern  side.  Such  was  not  the  view  of  education 
maintained  by  Samuel  Johnson  in  that  fine  passage 
in  which  he  criticizes  Milton's  scheme  : 

"  But  the  truth  is,  that  the  knowledge  of  external 
nature,  and  the  sciences  which  that  knowledge 
requires  or  includes,  are  not  the  great  or  the 
frequent  business  of  the  human  mind.  Whether 
we  provide  for  action  or  conversation,  whether  we 


V.—MIL  TON  A  GAINST  SOCRA  TES.         145 

wish  to  be  useful  or  pleasing,  the  first  requisite  is 
the  religious  and  moral  knowledge  of  right  and 
wrong;  the  next  is  an  acquaintance  with  the 
history  of  mankind,  and  with  those  examples 
which  may  be  said  to  embody  truth,  and  prove  by 
events  the  reasonableness  of  opinions.  Prudence 
and  justice  are  virtues  and  excellencies  of  all  times 
and  of  all  places  ;  we  are  perpetually  moralists, 
but  we  are  geometricians  only  by  chance.  Our 
intercourse  with  intellectual  nature  is  necessary ; 
our  speculations  upon  matters  are  voluntary,  and 
at  leisure.  Physiological  learning  is  of  such  rare 
emergence,  that  one  may  know  another  half 
his  life,  without  being  able  to  estimate  his  skill  in 
hydrostatics  or  astronomy ;  but  his  moral  and 
prudential  character  immediately  appears. 

"  Those  authors,  therefore,  are  to  be  read  at 
schools  that  supply  most  axioms  of  prudence, 
most  principles  of  moral  truth,  and  most  materials 
for  conversation  ;  and  these  purposes  are  best 
served  by  poets,  orators,  and  historians. 

"  Let  me  not  be  censured  for  this  digression,  as 
pedantic  and  paradoxical  ;  for,  if  I  have  Milton 
against  me,  I  have  Socrates  on  my  side.  It  was 
his  labour  to  turn  philosophy  from  the  study  of 
nature  to  speculations  upon  life  ;  but  the  inno- 
vators whom  I  oppose  are  turning  off  attention 

10 


146  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

from  life  to  nature.  They  seem  to  think  that  we 
are  placed  here  to  watch  the  growth  of  plants,  or 
the  motions  of  the  stars.  Socrates  was  rather  of 
opinion  that  what  we  had  to  learn  was,  how  to 
do  good  and  avoid  evil. 

"  OTTI  TOI  kv  fjiiydpoiffi  KO.KOV  T&jaQov  rt  TBTVKTO.I  "  * 


I  am  very  far  from  holding  with  Johnson  in  all 
that  he  says,  as  I  shall  presently  show  ;  but  this  I 
do  hold,  that  whether  we  are  dealing  with  the  child 
of  a  ploughman  or  the  child  of  a  king,  it  is  at  the 
perfection  of  his  manhood  that  we  should  aim. 
We  are  to  be  made  men  first,  and  ploughmen,  mer- 
chants, manufacturers,  artisans,  authors,  teachers, 
barristers,  priests,  or  kings  afterwards.  We  must 
teach  first  nobility  of  life  ;  we  must  teach  cha- 
racter ;  we  must  teach  the  love  of  honest,  thorough 
work  and  its  dignity  ;  we  must  teach  the  love  of 
knowledge  ;  we  must  teach  the  enjoyment  of  what 
is  simple,  innocent,  beautiful,  and  noble  ;  we  must 
teach  that  sober  reasonableness,  that  knowledge  of 
the  art  of  life,  that  wisdom  by  which  alone  we  can 
guide  our  little  bark  in  safety  down  the  rapid 
brawling  stream  of  life.  And  to  teach  all  these 
good  things  we  must  first  learn  them. 

x  "What  good,  what  ill  hath  in  thine  house  befallen  ' 
(Johnson's  "Works,"  vii.  76). 


V.— THE  A IM  OF  ED UCA  TION.  \  47 

"  But  Cristes  lore,  and  his  apostles  twelve 
He  taught,  but  first  he  followed  it  himselve." 

The  pettiness,  the  coarseness,  the  meanness,  the 
selfishness,  the  brutality  of  life  meet  us  on  all 
sides. 

"  Shades  of  the  prison-house  begin  to  close 
Upon  the  growing  boy." 

As  we  grow  older  cares  and  trouble  come  upon 
us  ;  hopes  are  baffled,  affections  are  wounded  ; 
death,  who  has  silently  watched  our  plan  of  life, 
the  pleasant  habitation  which  we  are  slowly  raising, 
with  a  sudden  rush  sweeps  one-half  of  it  away  ; 
disease  attacks  us,  and  "Melancholy's  phantoms 
haunt  our  shade."  We  may  have,  too,  our  times 
of  prosperity,  when  all  goes  well  with  us.  In  our 
youth  we  may  gain  prizes  and  exhibitions,  scholar- 
ships and  fellowships  ;  we  may  thrive  in  business, 
and  grow  in  wealth  ;  we  may  be  distinguished 
schoolmasters,  eminent  physicians,  leading  queen's 
counsel,  great  members  of  parliament,  famous 
divines  ;  we  may  have  swum  "  this  many  summers 
in  a  sea  of  glory,"  and  the  bladders  on  which  we 
float  may  never  yet  have  burst.  In  all  these 
shifting  scenes  of  life  how  is  the  balance  of  the 
mind  to  be  kept?  The  answer  was  given  long 
ages  ago.  "  Wisdom  is  the  principal  thing,  there- 


148  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

fore   get   wisdom,   and    with  all   thy  getting    get 
understanding." 

No  one,  not  even  the  outcast,  not  even  the 
poorest  workhouse  boy  is  to  be  trained  as  a  mere 
producing  machine.  He  is  to  be  made  a  man  first 
and  a  producer  afterwards.  "Misery,"  said  Carlyle, 
in  describing  his  father's  hard  childhood,  "  misery 
was  early  training  the  rugged  boy  into  a  stoic 
that  one  day  he  might  be  the  assurance  of  a 
Scottish  man."  But  misery  is  a  hard  and  most 
uncertain  mistress.  For  the  most  part  the  children 
trained  by  her  sink  to  a  lower  level  than  the  brutes. 
It  was  not  misery  alone  which  trained  James 
Carlyle.  He  trusted  besides,  to  use  his  son's 
words,  "  to  the  scanty  precepts  of  his  mother,  and 
to  what  seeds  or  influences  of  culture  were  hanging, 
as  it  were,  in  the  atmosphere  of  his  environment."  J 
Happy  the  household,  however  poor,  where  these 
seeds,  these  influences  are  found !  Happy  the 
children  who,  in  the  talk  round  the  family  table, 
hear  tell  of"  golden  days,  fruitful  in  golden  deeds  !  " 
Happy,  too,  are  those  whose  "imagination  is 
stretched"  while  they  are  young,  ere 

"  Custom  lie  upon  them  with  a  weight, 
Heavy  as  frost,  and  deep  almost  as  life." 


1  Carlyle's  "  Reminiscences,"  i.  36-7. 


V.— ROBERT  BURNS.  149 

Look  at  the  childhood  of  the  greatest  of  Scottish 
peasants — Robert  Burns.  He  was  brought  up  in 
the  hard  school  of  poverty  "  with  the  unceasing 
moil,"  as  he  describes  it,  "  of  a  galley-slave."  But 
his  father  had  struggled  "  to  keep  him  and  his 
other  children  under  his  own  eye  till  they  could 
discern  between  good  and  evil.  He  understood 
men,  their  manners,  and  their  ways,"  and  what  he 
had  learnt  he  taught  his  children.  But  the  boy 
had  another  teacher,  an  old  woman  who  resided  in 
the  family,  "  remarkable,"  Burns  says,  "  for  her 
ignorance,  credulity,  and  superstition  "  ;  but  I  will 
venture  to  maintain  a  better  infant  schoolmistress 
for  a  young  poet  than  any  training-school  could 
turn  out.  "  She  had  the  largest  collection  in  the 
country  of  tales  and  songs  concerning  devils, 
ghosts,  fairies,  brownies,  witches,  warlocks,  spun- 
kies,  kelpies,  elf-candles,  dead-lights,  wraiths,  appa- 
ritions, cantraips,  giants,  enchanted  towers,  dragons, 
and  other  trumpery.  This,"  Burns  continues, 
"  cultivated  the  latent  seeds  of  poetry."  Old 
Northcote  the  painter,  who  in  his  boyhood  had 
touched  the  skirt  of  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds's  coat, 
who  had  known  Goldsmith,  and  who  lived  to  be 
asked  by  a  little  child  named  John  Ruskin  why 
there  were  holes  in  his  carpet — Northcote,  I  say, 
talking  one  day  to  Hazlitt,  said  :  "  'Jack  the  Giant 


150  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

Killer'  is  the  first  book  I  ever  read,  and  I  cannot 
describe  the  pleasure  it  gives  me  even  now.  I 
cannot  look  into  it  without  my  eyes  filling  with 
tears.  I  do  not  know  what  it  is,  whether  good  or 
bad,  but  it  is  to  me,  from  early  impressions,  the 
most  heroic  of  performances.  I  remember  once 
not  having  money  to  buy  it,  and  I  transcribed  it 
all  out  with  my  own  hand.  Had  I  been  bred  a 
scholar,"  he  continues,  "  I  dare  say  Homer  would 
have  been  my  Jack  the  Giant  Killer."  Charles 
Lamb,  lamenting  to  Coleridge  the  banishment  "  of 
all  the  old  classics  of  the  nursery,"  says :  "  Think 
what  you  would  have  been  now,  if  instead  of  being 
fed  with  tales  and  old  wives'  fables  in  childhood, 
you  had  been  crammed  with  geography  and 
natural  history."  It  was  not  only  with  old  wives' 
fables  that  Burns  had  been  fed.  By  the  village 
schoolmaster  he  was  taught  English,  and  taught  it 
well.  "  The  earliest  composition,"  he  says,  "  that 
I  recollect  taking  pleasure  in  was  '  The  Vision  of 
Mirza,'  and  a  hymn  of  Addison's,  beginning,  '  How 
are  Thy  servants  blest,  O  Lord  ! '  I  particularly 
remember  one  half  stanza,  which  was  music  to 
my  boyish  ears : 


'  For  though  on  dreadful  whirls  we  hung 
High  on  the  broken  wave.' 


V—IMA  GIN  A  TION  KILLED.  1 5 1 

I  met  with  these  pieces  in  Mason's  '  English  Collec- 
tion,' one  of  my  school-books.  The  two  first  books 
I  ever  read  in  private,  and  which  gave  me  more 
pleasure  than  any  two  books  I  ever  read  since,  were 
'The  Life  of  Hannibal'  and  'The  History  of  Sir 
William  Wallace.'  Hannibal  gave  my  young  ideas 
such  a  turn  that  I  used  to  strut  in  raptures  up  and 
down  after  the  recruiting-drum  and  bagpipe,  and 
wish  myself  tall  enough  to  be  a  soldier  ;  while  the 
story  of  Wallace  poured  a  Scottish  prejudice  into 
my  veins,  which  will  boil  along  there  till  the  flood- 
gates of  life  shut  in  eternal  rest."  z 

The  flood-gates  of  life  were  not  shut  till  the 
poet,  with  the  old  story  still  working  in  him,  on  the 
field  of  Bannockburn  wrote  his  hymn  of  liberty. 

There  is  no  quality  which  more  needs  cultivating 
at  the  present  day  than  imagination.  It  is  killed 
by  our  civilization,  it  dies  in  the  meanness  of  our 
great  towns — in  that  "endless  addition  of  littleness 
to  littleness "  to  use  Edmund  Burke's  description 
of  London.2  Not  but  that  theve  are  quarters  in 
our  great  city  where  it  may  still  be  nourished.  In 
the  roar  of  its  streets ;  the  hurrying  to  and  fro  of 

1  Burns's  "  Poems,"  ed.  1846,  p.  15;  "Conversations  of 
Northcote,"  ed.  1830,  p.  96  ;  "  Letters  of  Charles  Lamb,"  ed. 
by  A.  Ainger,  i.  189. 

2  "  Correspondence  of  Edmund  Burke,"  iii.  422. 


152  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

eager  multitudes ;  the  gathering  together  of 
travelled  men  from  almost  all  the  countries  of  the 
world ;  the  strange  assemblage  of  commodities 
where  the  East  meets  the  West,  and  the  North  the 
South  ;  in  the  quiet  courts  and  ancient  buildings 
lying  so  close  to  "  the  way  of  common  trade,"  but 
not  of  it;  "the  sky-like  dome"  of  the  great 
cathedral ;  Westminster  Abbey  with  its  tombs  of 
"kings  and  counsellors  of  the  earth,"  and  its 
Poets'  Corner,  where  sleep  men  greater  than  kings 
and  counsellors ;  the  Tower  of  London  with  its 
little  chapel  "  where  the  prisoners  rest  together  "  ; 
Smithfield  with  its  memory  of  the  martyrs — in  all 
these  we  find  abundant  food  for  the  imagination- 
In  spite  of  the  vast  growth  of  the  unwieldly  city, 
and  the  ever-deepening  gloom  of  its  canopy  of 
smoke,  now  and  then  early  in  a  summer  morning, 
or  on  a  Sunday  when  ten  thousand  furnaces  are 
extinct,  when  the  freshening  wind  or  a  passing 
shower  has  cleared  the  air,  we  can  still,  as  the 
Thames  flows  beneath  us,  partake  of  the  deep 
feeling  which  moved  Wordsworth,  when  eighty- 
eight  years  ago  standing  on  Westminster  Bridge, 
he  composed  his  noble  sonnet : 

"  Earth  has  not  anything  to  show  more  fair  ; 
Dull  would  he  be  of  soul  who  could  pass  by 
A  sight  so  touching  in  its  majesty 


V.— LONDON.  153 

This  city  now  doth  like  a  garment  wear 

The  beauty  of  the  morning  ;  silent,  bare, 

Ships,  towers,  domes,  theatres,  and  temples  lie 

Open  unto  the  fields,  and  to  the  sky  ; 

All  bright  and  glittering  in  the  smokeless  air 

Never  did  sun  more  beautifully  steep 

In  his  first  splendour  valley,  rock,  or  hill ; 

Ne'er  saw  I,  never  felt,  a  calm  so  deep  ! 

The  river  glideth  at  his  own  sweet  will : 

Dear  God  !  the  very  houses  seem  asleep  ; 

And  all  that  mighty  heart  is  lying  still  1 " 


To  have  such  thoughts  as  these  set  stirring  in 
us,  it  must  be  with  a  mind  not  unstored  with 
knowledge  that  we  wander  through  the  streets. 
"  He  who  would  bring  home  the  wealth  of  the 
Indies  must  carry  the  wealth  of  the  Indies  with 
him."  But  whatever  impulses  can  be  given  to  the 
imagination  by  the  full  and  varied  life  of  old 
London,  how  miserably  is  it  starved  by  "  the  long 
unlovely  streets  "  of  the  western  quarter,  and  by 
the  meanness  of  the  poorer  suburbs !  I  not  un- 
frequently  have  to  make  my  way  from  Holborn  to 
Hampstead.  On  Staple  Inn,  with  its  fine  old 
gables  and  its  memories  of  Samuel  Johnson,  I 
cast  "  one  longing,  lingering  look  behind,"  and 
plunge  into  three  or  four  miles  of  dejection.  The 
eye  droops  and  the  spirit  with  it  at  the  sight  of 
prolonged  and  unmixed  meanness.  For  a  moment 


154  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

they  may  revive  a  little  as  I  pass  a  large  church- 
yard where  flowers  and  trees  have  been  lately 
planted,  and  walks  thrown  open,  where  the  young 
play  and  the  old  rest ;  they  may  even  revive  at  the 
great  Midland  Railway  Station  at  St.  Pancras,  for 
there  man  has  aimed  at  magnificence  ;  but  Camden 
Town,  "  that  dismal  world,"  beats  them  down  lower 
than  ever.  They  sink  to  rise  no  more.  Few 
sadder  thoughts  come  into  my  mind  than  when 
from  the  roof  of  the  tramcar  I  look  down  upon 
street  after  street  of  children  brought  up  in  the 
midst  of  this  ugly  meanness,  with  their  imagination 
hopelessly  starved.  They  may  be  happy  enough 
under  their  smoky  sky:  they  may  "shout  'neath 
their  sulphurous  canopy  "  ;  but  it  is  the  happiness 
of  stunted  growth,  the  shout  far  too  often  of  coarse 
joy.  One  of  the  noblest  qualities  of  the  mind  has 
in  them  received  no  nutriment.  It  is  starved  more- 
over by  the  advance  of  science,  that  is  rapidly 
dispelling  those  clouds  of  superstition  which,  irra- 
diated by  fancy,  often  cast  a  glow  of  beauty  on 
every-day  life. 

"  They  fade  into  the  light  of  common  day." 

It  is  with  deep  thankfulness  that  I  see  these 
clouds  scattered,  for  they  brought  with  them  not 


V.—  GREECE  AND  HOMER.  155 

only  beauty,  but  gloom  and  terror  and  cruelty. 
But  while  we  acknowledge  the  gain,  let  us  not 
shut  our  eyes  to  the  loss.  It  was  of  this  loss  which 
Lamb  was  thinking  when  he  mourned  over  "  the 
old  classics  of  the  nursery."  It  was  this  loss 
which  moved  Wordsworth  so  deeply  when  he 
cried  out : 

"  The  world  is  too  much  with  us  ;  late  and  soon, 
Getting  and  spending,  we  lay  waste  our  powers : 
Little  we  see  in  Nature  that  is  ours  ; 
We  have  given  our  hearts  away,  a  sordid  boon  ! 
This  Sea  that  bares  her  bosom  to  the  moon  ; 
The  winds  that  will  be  howling  at  all  hours, 
And  are  up-gathered  now  like  sleeping  flowers  ; 
For  this,  for  everything,  we  are  out  of  tune  ; 
It  moves  us  not.     Great  God  !  I'd  rather  be 
A  Pagan  suckled  in  a  creed  outworn  ; 
So  might  I,  standing  on  this  pleasant  lea, 
Have  glimpses  that  would  make  me  less  forlorn  ; 
Have  sight  of  Proteus  rising  from  the  sea  ; 
Or  hear  old  Triton  blow  his  wreathed  horn." 

Happy  as  Greece  was  in  her  mountains,  and  her 
valleys,  her  clear  sky  and  her  deep  blue  sea  with 
its  countless  inlets  and  islands,  still  happier,  I  have 
often  thought,  was  she  in  her  Homer.  In  the  Iliad 
and  Odyssey  she  had  two  great  poems  which  could 
equally  delight  the  child  and  solace  the  aged  man. 
No  one  was  too  young  for  them,  no  one  too  old. 
The  same  splendid  luminary  which  in  every  man 


156  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

ushered  in  the  dawn  of  thought  and  fancy,  gave 
light  to  his  matured  understanding,  and  with  its 
radiance  did  not  desert  his  declining  years.  By 
Homer's  verse  the  ear  of  the  child,  while  yet  his 
mind  caught  but  little  of  its  meaning,  was  trained 
in  the  beauty  of  words  and  of  rhythm  ;  by  the 
strange  stories  his  imagination  was  stretched  and 
his  eager  curiosity  awakened.  By  the  praise  of 
great  men  and  noble  deeds  his  love  of  virtue  and 
of  his  country  was  roused.  Much  he  could  not  at 
first  follow,  but  his  little  thoughts  would  be  set 
working.  There  was  no  writing  down  to  his 
understanding.  He  would  struggle  to  rise  to  the 
poet's  level ;  no  bard  of  poems  in  words  of  one 
syllable  was  required  to  come  down  to  his.  Single 
lines,  and  then  whole  passages  would  fix  them- 
selves in  his  memory,  where  they  would  remain  as 
long  as  memory  itself  remained.  They  would 
come  back  to  him  in  the  time  of  trial,  in  the  Bay 
of  Salamis,  and  on  the  Plain  of  Marathon.  They 
would  clothe  the  world  in  a  vesture  of  beauty;  they 
would  provide  him  with  a  refuge  from  the  squalor 
and  meanness  of  his  own  surroundings ;  they  would 
give  him  a  deep  sense  of  the  dignity  of  man  ;  they 
would  inspire  him  with  a  pride  in  his  city.  That 
place,  he  was  resolved,  should  be  no  mean  city  of 
which  he  was  a  citizen.  "  Our  poorest  citizens," 


V.—  THE  ENGLISH  BIBLE.  1 5  7 

said  Pericles,  "have  a  keen  relish  for  fine  poetry, 
eloquence,  art  and  grace  of  every  kind."  This, 
added  Grote,  "is  what  was  true  of  Athens,  and  has 
never  perhaps  been  true  of  any  community  since." 
It  was  mainly  by  Homer — Homer  who  accom- 
panied the  Athenian  citizen  from  his  cradle  to  his 
grave,  that  this  relish  was  given.  How  deeply 
their  great  national  poet  moved  the  Greeks  we  can 
in  some  measure  judge  by  the  way  in  which  it 
moves  even  us,  who  are  strangers  to  their  land, 
and  parted  from  them  by  a  wide  waste  of  years. 
"I  walked  far  into  Herefordshire,"  writes  Macaulay 
on  a  certain  day  in  August,  1851,  "and  read,  while 
walking,  the  last  five  books  of  the  Iliad,  with  deep 
interest  and  many  tears.  I  was  afraid  to  be  seen 
crying  by  the  parties  of  walkers  that  met  me  as  I 
came  back  :  crying  for  Achilles  cutting  off  his  hair ; 
crying  for  Priam  rolling  on  the  ground  in  the 
courtyard  of  his  house ;  mere  imaginary  beings, 
creatures  of  an  old  ballad-maker  who  died  near 
three  thousand  years  ago."  x 

Our  English  Bible,  while  it  does  much  for  us 
that  Homer  could  never  do,  might  have  done  far 
more  for  the  imagination  had  it  not  been  "  soiled 
by  all  ignoble  use."  It  is  as  noble  a  piece  of  prose 

1  "  Life  of  George  Grote,"  p.  203  ;  "  Life  of  Lord  Ma- 
caulay," ed.  1877,  ii.  297. 


158  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

as  any  tongue  can  boast  of;  io  its  language  it 
stands  side  by  side  with  Shakespeare.  They  are 
the  great  twin  brethren  of  English  literature.  But 
on  it  have  been  hung  system  after  system,  creed 
after  creed.  It  has  been  used  as  the  battle-field  of 
bigotry  and  dulness  ;  as  the  torture  chamber  of 
childhood  ;  as  a  dark  hole  in  which  imagination 
and  fancy,  gaiety  and  all  the  joys  of  living  should 
be  stifled.  It  has  been  turned  into  a  task-book, 
a  book  of  impositions  and  punishments.  It  has 
been  treated  as  no  other  great  work  has  ever 
before  been  treated.  Its  most  beautiful  verses 
have  been  stretched  and  expanded  and  paraphrased 
till  they  cover  more  roods  of  print  than  Milton's 
Satan  covered  of  the  burning  flood.  "Jesus  wept" 
was  turned  by  the  Rev.  Dr.  Harwood  in  his 
"  Liberal  Translation  of  the  New  Testament"  into 
"  the  Saviour  of  the  world  burst  into  a  flood  of 
tears."  "  Puppy,"  exclaimed  Dr.  Johnson,  as  he 
contemptuously  threw  the  book  aside.  But  in  the 
church  or  chapel  the  child  or  youth  cannot  cry  out 
"Puppy!  "  when  for  three-quarters  of  an  hour  some 
dull  fellow  turns  a  noble  and  beautiful  thought  into 
a  dreary  wilderness  of  words.  If  he  did  he  would 
be  caned  by  the  beadle  or  indicted  for  brawling. 
Then,  too,  there  are  those  who,  with  what  Addison 
calls  "a  natural  uncheerfulness  of  heart,  are  scan- 


V.—THE  ENGLISH  BIBLE.  159 

dalized  at  youth  for  being  lively,  and  at  childhood 
for  being  playful.  They  sit  at  a  christening 
or  a  marriage-feast  as  at  a  funeral,  sigh  at 
the  conclusion  of  a  merry  story,  and  grow  devout 
when  the  rest  of  the  company  grow  pleasant."1  In 
the  hands  of  such  people  as  these  the  Scriptures 
are  only  used  as  a  rude  weapon  of  offence,  as  a 
stick  to  beat  a  sinner  with.  In  after  days  by  that 
strange  association  of  ideas  which  plays  such  freaks 
with  us,  it  only  too  commonly  happens  that  the 
sight  of  the  Bible,  after  this  cruel  misuse  of  it,  at 
once  rouses  in  the  mind  a  feeling  of  dulness  and 
depression.  To  many,  I  gladly  own,  it  always  re- 
mains the  freshest  of  books.  It  fed  John  Bunyan, 
a  man  unsurpassed  in  imagination.  From  it  John 
Milton  drew  one-half  of  his  inspiration,  and  John 
Bright  the  best  part  of  his  noble  oratory.  Even 
with  all  its  misuse  it  is  the  book  which  most  of  all 
has  carried  imagination  into  children's  hearts.  It 
might  in  all  of  us  remain  throughout  life  the  chief 
source  of  that  sublime  faculty  were  it  not  degraded 
from  its  high  post  by  man's  dulness.  In  these 
latter  days  a  worse  evil  than  ever  has  befallen  it  ; 
it  has  got  into  the  stifling  grasp  of  school-inspec- 

1  BoswelPs  "  Life  of  Johnson,"   Hi.   39  ;    The  Spectator, 
No.  494. 


160  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

tors   and   examiners.      Against   them   "even    the 
Gods  strive  in  vain." 

In  the  dulness  of  modern  life  imagination  is  still 
further  starved.  Of  old  in  the  stately  processions 
of  the  court,  of  the  church,  and  of  the  guilds  a 
rich  and  varied  colouring  was  given  to  our  streets. 
The  signboards  over  the  shops,  with  their  pictures 
of  more  animals  than  are  known  to  nature,  and 
the  bright  colours  of  the  clothes  commonly  worn, 
lent  life  and  animation  to  the  scene.  Even  the 
men  of  last  century,  scorned  as  they  are  for  their 
want  of  fancy,  wore  coats  of  blue  and  green  and 
scarlet.  Goldsmith's  bloom-coloured  coat  must 
have  helped  to  brighten  Fleet  Street.  The  God- 
dess of  Dulness  had  not  yet  appeared  under  her 
new  name  of  Respectability,  with  her  worshippers 
wearing  black  coats  and  tall  silk  hats. 

"  Before  her  fancy's  gilded  clouds  decay, 
And  all  its  varying  rainbows  die  away." 

Even  Oxford  has  turned  traitor.  The  gown 
which  gave  so  picturesque  a  look  to  her  streets  is 
now  but  little  worn,  and  is  likely  before  very  long 
to  become  a  relic  of  the  past.  Men  are  afraid  of 
being  suspected  of  taking  pride  in  wearing  it. 
Strangers  in  the  coming  century  will  be  heard 
saying,  with  the  change  of  but  one  word  in 
Tennyson's  lines : 


V.— SCHOOLBOY  GAMES.  161 

"  I  past  beside  the  reverend  walls 
In  which  of  old  they  wore  the  gown." 

Even  in  our  very  playgrounds  imagination  is 
struck  with  decay.  It  was  said  by  Dr.  Arbuthnot, 
that  "  most  universal  genius "  of  Queen  Anne's 
days,  "that  nowhere  is  tradition  preserved  pure 
and  incorrupt  but  among  schoolboys,  whose  games 
and  plays  are  handed  down  invariably  the  same 
from  one  generation  to  another." z  A  single 
generation  has,  however,  seen  more  games  die  out 
than  it  took  fifty  generations  to  invent.  They 
may,  perhaps,  linger  in  the  smaller  schools  in  out- 
of-the-way  places,  but  they  are  everywhere,  I 
fear,  fast  disappearing.  Lads  play  solemnly  and 
by  system.  They  take  their  games  as  their  fore- 
fathers were  said  to  take  their  pleasures — sadly. 
We  no  longer  see 

"  Four-and-twenty  happy  boys 
Come  bounding  out  of  school." 

They  first  put  on  their  flannels,  and  then  stride 
forth  majestically.  The  delightful  naturalness  of 
games,  the  unbounded  freedom,  the  perfect  sim- 
plicity in  which  all  was  forgotten  but  the  joy  of 
playing  is  known  no  more.  Jack  runs  and  jumps, 
not  because 

1  Swift's  "Works,"  ed.  1803,  xxiii.  22. 
ii 


1 62  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

"  He  lightly  draws  his  breath, 
And  feels  his  life  in  every  limb  ; " 

but  that  he  may  run  a  hundred  yards  in  a  quarter 
of  a  second  less  than  Harry,  or  jump  an  eighth  of 
an  inch  higher  than  Tom.  A  cricket  match  is 
carried  on  with  a  gravity  which  would  not  disgrace 
a  set  of  undertakers.  Every  part  of  it  is  after- 
wards dissected  as  minutely  as  the  anatomist 
dissects  a  muscle,  and  analyzed  as  carefully  as  a 
new  substance  in  chemistry.  Averages  are  struck 
and  results  are  published  with  far  greater  accuracy 
than  we  can  hope  ever  to  see  attained  in  the  census 
paper.  Football  is  put  under  law-givers  almost  as 
severe  as  Draco,  and  is  managed  by  marshals  who 
at  every  moment  are  throwing  their  warders  down. 
Many  a  game  which  delighted  my  boyhood — as, 
no  doubt,  it  had  delighted  the  boyhood  of 
countless  generations — is  no  longer  played.  For 
every  five  games  I  knew,  my  sons,  I  verily  believe, 
when  they  were  at  school,  scarce  knew  one.  When 
the  modern  Etonian  reads — perhaps  I  should  say 
if  he  reads — Gray's  "  Distant  Prospect  of  Eton 
College,"  with  what  a  smile  of  disdain  must  he 
learn "  that  his  predecessors  "  chased  the  rolling 
circle's  speed "  :  in  other  words,  bowled  a  hoop. 
Low  as  Eton  once  was,  Harrow  was  almost  lower. 
One  hundred  and  thirty  years  ago,  two  boys,  after- 


V.—HARRO  W  LAST  CENTUR  Y.  1 63 

wards  famous  as  great  scholars — Sir  William  Jones 
and  Dr.  Parr — "  divided  the  fields  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  the  school,  according  to  a  map  of 
Greece,  into  states  and  kingdoms  ;  each  fixed  upon 
one  as  his  dominion,  and  assumed  an  ancient 
name.  Some  of  their  schoolfellows  consented  to 
be  styled  barbarians,  who  were  to  invade  their  ter- 
ritories and  attack  their  hillocks,  which  were 
denominated  fortresses.  The  chiefs  vigorously 
defended  their  respective  domains  against  the 
incursions  of  the  enemy :  and  in  these  imitative 
wars  the  young  statesmen  held  councils,  made 
vehement  harangues,  and  composed  memorials — 
all  doubtless  very  boyish,  but  calculated  to  fill 
their  minds  with  ideas  of  legislation  and  civil 
government."  So  wrote  Sir  William  Jones's 
biographer,  Lord  Teign  mouth,  a  man  who  holds 
a  high  post  among  the  legislators  and  governors 
of  India. 

Just  as  young  Jones  had  turned  the  fields  of 
Harrow  into  Grecian  states,  so  a  few  years  later, 
in  the  north  of  Scotland,  James  Mackintosh,  who, 
like  Jones,  was  destined  to  become  known  as  an 
Indian  judge  and  famous  as  a  scholar,  turned  his 
school  into  the  Roman  Empire.  "Before  I  was 
fourteen,"  he  writes,  "  I  read  the  old  translation  of 
Plutarch's  'Lives'  and  Echard's  'Roman  His- 


j 64  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

tory.'  I  well  remember  that  the  perusal  of  the 
last  led  me  into  a  ridiculous  habit,  from  which  I 
shall  never  be  totally  free.  I  used  to  fancy  myself 
Emperor  of  Constantinople ;  I  distributed  offices 
and  provinces  amongst  my  schoolfellows.  I 
loaded  my  favourites  with  dignity  and  power,  and 
I  often  made  the  object  of  my  dislike  feel  the 
weight  of  my  imperial  resentment.  I  carried  on 
the  series  of  political  events  in  solitude  for  several 
hours  ;  I  resumed  them  and  continued  them  from 
day  to  day  for  months."  * 

Games  such  as  these,  if  they  did  not  swell  to  the 
full  the  calves  of  the  legs  and  the  muscles  of  the 
arms,  at  all  events  fed  the  imagination.  I  look 
back  with  delight  to  the  sports  of  my  childhood, 
free  and  full  of  variety,  changing  sometimes  with 
the  seasons,  but  more  often  with  our  caprices, 
unvexed  by  training  and  competition,  and  un- 
tainted by  publicity  and  prizes.  As  I  charged  at 
a  rough  game  called  "  hoppy,"  I  used  to  think 
myself  the  Black  Knight  or  Ivanhoe  ;  as  I  stole 
through  the  trees  at  hide-and-seek,  I  was  the  Last 
of  the  Mohicans  or  Deerslayer.  How  delightful 
was  the  paper-chase  in  the  forest,  as  the  hares  led 
us  we  knew  not  where,  from  thicket  to  thicket  and 

1  "  Life  of  Sir  William  Jones,"  p.  25  ;  "  Life  of  Sir  James 
Mackintosh,"  i.  5. 


V.—THE  SOLEMNITY  OF  GAMES.          165 

from  glade  to  glade  !  At  the  present  time  in  the 
great  schools,  I  am  told,  the  course  they  shall  take 
is  all  laid  down  beforehand.  It  is  along  roads, 
not  through  woods  and  fields,  that  they  are  to  run, 
and  glory,  not  joy,  is  the  reward  of  the  chase. 
Watch  in  hand,  the  umpire  awaits  their  return, 
who,  with  the  accuracy  of  an  astronomer  and  the 
gravity  of  a  judge,  records  the  exact  number  of 
minutes  and  seconds  each  has  taken,  and  then 
prepares  his  report  for  the  next  number  of  the  School 
Magazine,  or  even  of  some  sporting  newspaper. 

Formality  and  dulness,  which  had  long  been 
contented  with  their  empire  over  religion  and 
learning  have  indeed  with  rapid  advance  extended 
their  sway  over  our  playing-fields.  They  have 
gathered  under  it  not  only  those  who  do  play,  but 
also  those  who  do  not.  A  football  match  is  going 
on  :  fifteen  youths  on  either  aide  are  rapidly 
covering  themselves  with  mud  and  glory ;  but 
however  plentiful  may  be  the  mud,  their  glory 
cannot  be  complete  without  a  large  ring  of  spec- 
tators. The  whole  school  must  be  swept  together 
to  stand  round  and  applaud.  The  boy  who  loves 
the  fields  and  nature,  solitude  and  meditation,  and 
who  wanders  away, 

"Step  following  step,  and  thought  by  thought  led  on," 


166  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

is  reproached  not  only  by  his  playmates,  but  by 
his  dull  masters  with  his  want  of  "patriotism.' 
"  Patriotism  "  Johnson  defined  as  "  the  last  refuge 
of  a  scoundrel  "  ;  had  he  lived  now  he  would  have 
been  indignant  at  the  base  use  to  which  it  can  be 
put  by  a  blockhead.  Let  us  hope  that,  in  defiance 
of  the  law  of  public  opinion,  not  less  strong 
because  it  is  unwritten,  and  in  spite  of  the 
reproaches  cast  upon  them,  in  scorn  of  the  strong 
man's  contumely, 

"  Some  bold  adventurers  disdain 
The  limits  of  their  little  reign, 
And  unknown  regions  dare  descry  : 
Still  as  they  run  they  look  behind, 
They  hear  a  voice  in  every  wind, 
And  snatch  a  fearful  joy." 

One  such  adventurer,  a  poet  ever  dear  to  him  to 
whom  Nature  is  dear,  thus  describes  his  schoolboy 
rambles : 

"  For  I  have  loved  the  rural  walk  through  lanes 
Of  grassy  swarth,  close-cropt  by  nibbling  sheep, 
And  skirted  thick  with  intertexture  firm 
Of  thorny  boughs  :  have  loved  the  rural  walk 
O'er  hills,  through  valleys,  and  by  river's  brink, 
E'er  since  a  truant  boy  I  passed  my  bounds 
T'  enjoy  a  ramble  on  the  banks  of  Thames. 
And  still  remember,  nor  without  regret 
Of  hours  that  sorrow  since  has  much  endear'd, 
How  oft,  my  slice  of  pocket  store  consumed, 


V.—SCHOOLDA  Y  RAMBLES.  167 

Still  hung'ring,  pennyless,  and  far  from  home, 
I  fed  on  scarlet  hips  and  stony  haws, 
Or  blushing  crabs,  or  berries  that  imboss 
The  bramble,  black  as  jet,  or  sloes  austere." 

It  was  not  with  the  ramble  that  the  enjoyment 
ceased.  It  remained  with  Covvper  through  the 
long  years  of  his  troubled  life. 

"  Youth  repairs 

His  wasted  spirits  quickly,  by  long  toil 
Incurring  short  fatigue  ;  and  though  our  years, 
As  life  declines,  speed  rapidly  away, 
And  not  a  year  but  pilfers  as  he  goes 
Some  youthful  grace  that  age  would  gladly  keep, 
A  tooth  or  auburn  lock,  and  by  degrees 
Their  length  and  colour  from  the  locks  they  spare ; 
Th'  elastic  spring  of  an  unwearied  foot 
That  mounts  the  stile  with  ease,  or  leaps  the  fence, 
That  play  of  lungs  inhaling  and  again 
Respiring  freely  the  fresh  air,  that  makes 
Swift  pace  or  steep  ascent  no  toil  to  me, 
Mine  have  not  pilfer'd  yet ;  nor  yet  impair'd 
My  relish  of  fair  prospect  ;  scenes  that  sooth'd 
Or  charmed  me  young,  no  longer  young,  I  find 
Still  soothing  and  of  power  to  charm  me  still." 

If  modern  patriotism  came  to  an  end  with 
schooldays,  though  the  mischief  done  would  still 
be  vast,  a  partial  cure  might  yet  be  found.  But 
this  patriotic  habit,  once  formed,  follows  our  youths 
from  the  school  to  the  university.  In  the  autumn 


168  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

term,  two  or  three  times  every  week,  a  dense  ring 
is  formed  in  the  Parks  round  the  football-ground. 
On  some  bright  day  early  in  November,  when  the 
beauty  of  the  late  autumn  calls  us  forth  with  a 
summons  that  cannot  be  withstood,  not  only 
because  the  beauty  is  so  great,  but  because  we 
know  that  its  life  is  so  brief,  a  thousand  of  these 
patriots  are  massed  together.  What  care  they 
that  the  wind  is  blowing  fresh  on  Cumner  Hurst 
or  on  Shotover  ?  what  care  they  that  "  the  flying 
gold  of  the  ruined  woodland  drives  through  the 
air  "  ?  Their  duty  requires  them  for  the  space  of 
one  hour  to  bawl  out  in  their  vile  slang,  "  Well 
played  'Varsity  ! "  They  know  nothing  of  country 
rambles,  the  delight  of  country  walks.  If  a  friend 
tries  to  tempt  them  abroad,  they  sternly  push  him 
aside,  as  Regulus  pushed  aside  his  kinsmen  and  the 
crowd  who  would  delay  his  return  to  Carthage  and 
to  death.  I  once  met  in  Switzerland  two  Oxo- 
nians, fine  young  fellows  and  great  athletes,  but  as 
ignorant  as  a  child  in  long  clothes  of  the  art  of 
walking.  Apparently  they  had  not  so  much  as 
heard  that  there  was  a  country  round  about 
Oxford.  Their  outdoor  life,  both  here  and  at 
school,  had  been  all  spent  in  the  cricket-field  or 
the  football-ground.  With  the  son  of  Alcinous, 
they  would  have  said  : 


V.—  SPORTING  NEWSPAPERS.  169 

u  Ou  fiiv  yap  fitl£ov  xrXjoc  avfpof,  oQpu  Kfv,  £fftv, 


re 


"  For  greater  praise 

Hath  no  man  while  he  lives,  than  that  he  know 
His  feet  to  exercise  and  hands  aright." 

How  far  otherwise  had  Thysis  sought  his  strength, 
that  refined  and  gentle  poet  whom  his  brother 
bard,  now  himself  taken  from  us,  so  gracefully 
lamented  : 

"  And  this  rude  Cumner  ground, 

Its  fir-topped  Hurst,  its  farms,  its  quiet  fields, 
Here  cam'st  thou  in  thy  jocund  youthful  time, 
Here  was  thine  height  of  strength,  thy  golden  prime  ! 
And  still  the  haunt  beloved  a  virtue  yields." 

A  man  of  my  time  of  life  must  mourn  with  Cowper 
over  many  things  that  the  years  have  taken  from 
him,  but  over  one  thing  he  may  rejoice.  He  was 
born  when  games  were  still  thoughtless  and  free. 

"  Ere  the  base  laws  of  servitude  began, 
When  wild  in  woods  the  happy  schoolboy  ran." 

Happy,  too,  were  we  that  we  had  to  seek  our 
heroes  elsewhere  than  in  the  columns  of  sporting 
newspapers.  In  those  simple  days  there  was,  I 
believe,  but  one  paper  of  that  dull  class  published 
in  the  whole  of  England.  It  came  forth  but  once 
a  week  and  cost  sixpence.  No  names  of  mighty 


i;o  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

cricketers,  football  players,  jumpers  and  runners 
were  familiar  in  our  mouths.  I  cannot  call  to 
mind  that  even  in  my  undergraduate  days  their 
fame  troubled  us.  In  our  eager  talk  we  travelled 
far  and  wide,  but  on  athletics  we  never  touched. 
In  the  university  "  sports,"  as  they  are  called, 
were  unknown,  and,  so  far  as  my  memory  serves, 
so  also  were  football  matches.  At  all  events,  if 
they  went  on,  they  were  not  conspicuous.  Even 
the  Oxford  and  Cambridge  cricket  match  at 
Lord's  was  watched  by  few.  He  who  strolled  in 
to  see  it  sauntered  where  he  wished,  or  lay  at  full 
length  on  the  grass  with  no  one  to  obstruct  the  view. 
Had  Themistocles  lived  now-a-days  it  would  not 
have  been  the  trophies  of  Miltiades  which  would 
not  suffer  him  to  sleep,  but  the  live  ox  carried  by 
Milo  over  the  race-course  of  Olympia.  Had  he 
come  up  to  Oxford,  it  would  not  have  been  "  o'er 
Bodley's  Dome,"  but  over  the  Parks  that  his 
future  labours  would  have  spread.  In  my  first 
lecture  I  read  to  you  the  fine  passage  in  which 
Johnson  describes  a  scholar's  career.  I  will  now 
venture  to  read  a  parody  on  it  which  I  published 
last  year  in  the  Speaker : 

"  When  first  the  College  rolls  receive  their  names 
The  young  enthusiasts  quit  their  work  for  games  : 
Through  all  their  limbs  the  fever  of  renown 


V.—THE  DOOM  OF  MAN.  171 

Leads  them  to  scorn  the  labours  of  the  gown  : 
O'er  football  fields  their  future  labours  spread, 
And  many  a  foe  they  tumble  on  his  head. 
Are  these  your  views  ?     Proceed  illustrious  souls 
And  hacking  bring  you  to  the  football  goals. 
Yet,  should  your  limbs  succeed  in  every  heat 
Till  all  your  records  there  is  none  to  beat  ; 
Should  training  guide  you  in  the  wisest  way 
And  send  you  perfect  to  the  racing  day ; 
Should  no  false  kindness  lure  to  drink  all  night, 
No  pipes  relax,  nor  early  risings  fright  ; 
Should  tempting  pastrycooks  your  rooms  refrain, 
And  sloth  effuse  Virginian  fumes  in  vain  ; 
Should  beauty  blunt  on  dons  her  fatal  dart, 
Nor  claim  to  triumph  o'er  the  trainer's  art ; 
Should  no  disease  spoil  '  Torpids'  or  the  'Eights,' 
Or  melancholy  thoughts  of  coming  '  Greats  ' ; 
Yet  hope  not  life  from  schools  or  cramming  free, 
Nor  think  the  doom  of  pluck  reversed  for  ye. 
Deign  on  the  passman's  world  to  turn  your  eyes, 
And  pause  awhile  from  kicking  to  be  wise. 
There  mark  what  ills  the  athlete's  life  attack, 
Sprains,  bruises,  bumps,  at  times  a  broken  back. 
See  Guardians,  wisely  slow  and  meanly  just 
To  worn-out  athletes  throw  the  workhouse  crust ; 
If '  Blues  '  yet  flatter,  once  again  attend, 
Or  else  in  looking  blue  your  life  will  end." 

It  is  a  melancholy  change  when  in  the  columns 
of  sporting  papers  not  in  the  pages  of  poetry, 
romance  and  history  ;  in  the  record  of  "  events," 
as  they  are  absurdly  called,  not  in  Froissart, 
Shakespeare,  Defoe,  and  Scott,  that  our  heroes  are 
sought  for  and  found.  "  Teach  us  to  admire,"  the 


i;2  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

Master  of  Balliol  is  reported  to  have  said  to  a 
newly-appointed  Professor  of  Poetry.  It  is  a 
lesson  that  should  not  have  to  be  taught  in  such 
a  spot  as  this.  If  he  were  to  keep  silence  the 
very  stones  would  cry  out.  Listen  to  the  words 
which  one  of  the  great  band  of  poets  who  are  the 
peculiar  glory  of  Cambridge  wrote  of  his  famous 
College : 

"  I  could  not  print 

Ground  where  the  grass  had  yielded  to  the  steps 
Of  generations  of  illustrious  men, 
Unmoved.     I  could  not  always  lightly  pass 
Through  the  same  gateways,  sleep  where  they  had  slept, 
Wake  where  they  waked,  range  that  enclosure  old, 
That  garden  of  great  intellects,  undisturbed." 


LECTURE  VI. 


LECTURE  VI. 

r  I  ""HE   feelings   which   would  naturally  rise  in 
J.      us   on   hearing    of    great    men    and    great 
deeds  may  be  stifled  in  our  youth.     Chill  pedantry 
quite  as  much  as  chill  penury  may — 

"  repress  the  noble  rage 
And  freeze  the  genial  current  of  the  soul." 

"  What  would  you  give  my  lad,"  said  Johnson  to 
a  boy  who  was  sculling  him  and  Boswell  on  the 
Thames,  "  what  would  you  give  to  know  about  the 
Argonauts  ?  "  "  Sir,"  said  the  boy,  "  I  would  give 
what  I  have."  Johnson  turning  to  Boswell,  "  sir," 
said  he,  "  a  desire  of  knowledge  is  the  natural 
feeling  of  mankind  ;  and  every  human  being, 
whose  mind  is  not  debauched,  will  be  willing  to 
give  all  that  he  has  to  get  knowledge."  There  are 
many  things  which  may  debauch  the  mind.  It 
may  be  debauched  by  competition  and  cramming. 


i;6  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

The  love  of  knowledge  cannot  be  planted  by 
examiners  or  watered  by  inspectors.  It  is  not 
they  who  can  give  the  increase.  I  am  not  so 
foolish  as  to  deny  that  examiners  and  inspectors 
have  their  use.  A  needful,  nay  a  great  part,  of 
teaching  consists  in  implanting  habits  of  accuracy 
and  in  giving  the  power  of  mastering  subjects 
which  are  difficult  and  sometimes  dry  and  dis- 
tasteful. "  It  is  no  doubt,"  wrote  John  Mill,  "  a 
very  laudable  effort  in  modern  teaching  to  render 
as  much  as  possible  of  what  the  young  are  re- 
quired to  learn  easy  and  interesting  to  them.  But 
when  this  principle  is  pushed  to  the  length  of  not 
requiring  them  to  learn  anything  but  what  has 
been  made  easy  and  interesting,  one  of  the  chief 
objects  of  education  is  sacrificed.  I  rejoice  in  the 
decline  of  the  old  brutal  and  tyrannical  system  of 
teaching,  which,  however,  did  succeed  in  enforcing 
habits  of  application  ;  but  the  new,  as  it  seems  to 
me,  is  training  up  a  race  of  men  who  will  be 
incapable  of  doing  anything  which  is  disagreeable 
to  them."  * 

I  am  as  fully  alive  as  any  one  to  the  evils  of 
what  he  meant  by  the  new  system,  for  under  it 
my  own  education  greatly  suffered.  But  while  to 

1  Boswell's  "Johnson,"  i.  458  ;  "Autobiography  of  Mill," 
p.  52. 


VI.— EXAMINERS  AND  INSPECTORS.       177 

guard  against  these  evils,  and  against  indolent  and 
inaccurate  teaching  also,  we  use  examiners  and 
inspectors,  let  us  resist,  as  far  as  we  can,  their 
invasion  of  that  part  of  the  mind  where  they  can 
only  work  havoc.  "  A  cow  is  a  very  good  animal 
in  a  field,  but  we  turn  her  out  of  a  garden." 
Examiners  and  school  inspectors  like  cows  are 
always  trying  to  break  in  where  by  their  clumsy 
trampling  they  can  only  do  mischief.  To  keep 
them  out  needs  a  far  stronger  hedge  than  as  yet 
has  anywhere  been  provided.  They  encourage 
display — a  great  evil  in  every  part  and  period  of 
life,  but  doubly  great  in  education.  For  it  is  most 
successfully  made  not  by  the  good,  but  by  the 
dexterous  teacher  ;  not  in  the  higher,  but  in  the 
lower  faculties  of  the  mind.  It  is  not  the  reason- 
ing powers,  not  the  powers  of  the  fancy  and 
imagination  which  are  tested  and  exhibited.  It 
is  not  the  eager  desire  for  knowledge,  the  teacher's 
crowning  glory,  that  can  be  measured.  He  who 
has  implanted  that  has  done  even  more  than  the 
Sirens  promised.  Whoever  comes  to  us,  they 
sang,  goes  on  his  way  full  of  delight  and  with 
increase  of  knowledge.  But  to  delight  and 
knowledge  the  good  teacher  adds  a  still  greater 
gift — an  ardent  and  noble  curiosity,  an  eager 
desire  to  know  more.  "  I  will  back  Shenstone's 

12 


1 78  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

schoolmistress,"  says  Wordsworth,  "  by  her  winter 
fire  and  in  her  summer  garden-seat  against  all  Dr. 
Bell's  sour-looking  teachers  in  petticoats  that  I 
have  seen."  We  can  easily  believe  that,  partly 
because  he  looked  on  all  things  too  much  with  the 
eye  of  a  solitary  poet,  and  partly  because  as  age 
came  on  him  he  clung  too  much  to  the  past,  he 
failed  to  see  whatever  there  was  of  good  in  the 
new  system  of  education.  Nevertheless,  his  ad- 
miration of  Shenstone's  Village  Dame  had  some 
justification.  Her  children  would  scarcely,  perhaps, 
have  passed  the  lowest  standard  ;  yet  she  may 
have  had  one  or  two  of  the  best  qualities  of  the 
teacher.  History  certainly  has  often  been  far 
worse  taught  The  poet  describes  her  garden  and 
continues  : 


"  Here  oft  the  dame,  on  Sabbath's  decent  eve, 
Hymned  such  psalms  as  Sternhold  forth  did  mete  ; 
If  winter  'twere,  she  to  her  hearth  did  cleave  ; 
But  in  her  garden  found  a  summer-seat  : 
Sweet  melody  !  to  hear  her  then  repeat 
How  Israel's  sons,  beneath  a  foreign  king, 
While  taunting  foemen  did  a  song  entreat, 
All  for  the  nonce  untuning  every  string, 
Uphung  their  useless  lyres — small  heart  had  they  to  sing. 

For  she  was  just,  and  friend  to  virtuous  lore, 
And  pass'd  much  time  in  truly  virtuous  deed  ; 
And,  in  those  elfins'  ears,  would  oft  deplore 


VI. —SCHOOL  HISTORIES.  179 

The  times  when  Truth  by  Popish  rage  did  bleed, 

And  tortious  death  was  true  Devotion's  meed  ; 

And  simple  Faith  in  iron  chains  did  mourn, 

That  nould  *  on  wooden  image  place  her  creed  ; 

And  lawny  saints  in  smouldering  flames  did  burn  ; 

Ah  !  dearest  Lord  1  forfend  thilk  days  should  e'er  return.' 


Her  history,  if  it  was  rude,  was  at  all  events  a 
living  thing.  It  was  no  "  old  almanac,"  no  mere 
system  of  dull  chronology  and  empty  lifeless 
names.  It  was  the  imagination,  and  not  the 
memory  she  exercised.  England  of  the  Reforma- 
tion was  to  her  a  real  and  terrible,  but  very  noble 
thing,  which  must  be  pictured  to  her  little  scholars 
so  that  when  they  grew  up  they  might  each  to  the 
utmost  strive  against  "  the  triple  tyrant"  She  had 
her  learning,  no  doubt,  fresh  from  Fox's  "  Book 
of  Martyrs "  and  "  The  Pilgrim's  Progress." 
School  histories,  those  instruments  of  torture, 
had  not  yet  been  invented.  They  are  like  the 
dungeon  in  the  Tower  of  London  called  Little 
Ease,  where  the  unhappy  prisoner  could  not  stand, 
sit,  or  lie  in  any  comfort.  They  cramp  the  under- 
standing, they  choke  the  imagination.  They  are 
worse  than  no  food  at  all,  for  they  take  away 
appetite  and  they  afford  no  nourishment.  Happily 
for  me  when  I  was  young,  Goldsmith — unabridged 
1  Nould  is  would  not. 


i8o  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

Goldsmith — had  not  been  banished  from  the 
schoolroom,  and  in  his  delightful  pages  Greece 
and  Rome  had  a  real  life.  Into  errors  enough  he 
fell  no  doubt,  for  accuracy  was  not  his  strongest 
point.  In  his  "Animated  Nature"  he  makes  the 
cow  shed  her  horns  every  year.  But  he  did  not 
fall  into  dulness.  His  Greeks  and  Romans  lived 
for  us  ;  I  loved  the  just  Aristides  and  the  mild 
Camillus.  They  were  as  real  to  me  as  Robinson 
Crusoe  and  Friday.  No  place  on  earth  was  dearer 
to  me  than  the  little  town  of  Plataea.  Its  sad  and 
glorious  story  as  told  in  Dr.  Smith's  "  School 
History"  could  not  ruffle  the  surface  of  the  mind 
for  a  single  moment,  or  remain  in  it,  unless 
supported  by  the  hope  of  rewards  or  the  fear  of 
punishment,  for  a  single  week  But  I  read  it  in 
the  pages  of  Goldsmith,  that 

"  Affectuum  potens  at  lenis  dominator ;" 
that  gentle  master  of  passion,  who— 


"  sways  it  to  the  mood 
Of  what  he  likes  or  loathes," 


and  having  there  read  it,  I  am  still  inspired,  after 
the  lapse  of  six  and  forty  years,  with  a  love  of  the 


VI.— GOLDSMITH'S  HISTORIES.  181 

little  town,  and  a  longing  to  visit  the  spot  where 
it  once  stood. 

What  a  difference,  too,  do  we  find  in  the  story 
of  the  ostracism  of  Aristides  as  narrated  by  the 
man  of  industry  and  the  man  of  genius!  "We 
are  told,"  writes  Dr.  Smith,  "that  an  unlettered 
countryman  gave  his  vote  against  Aristides,  at  the 
ostracism,  because  he  was  tired  of  hearing  him 
always  called  the  '  Just.'  "  Here  we  certainly  have 
all  that  we  need  have  to  enable  us  to  appear  with 
confidence  before  an  examiner.  Question.  "  Why 
did  a  countryman  vote  against  Aristides  ? " 
Answer.  "  Because  he  was  tired  of  hearing  him 
always  called  the  Just."  Result — a  good  mark 
scored  down  by  the  examiner,  and  the  story  in 
a  few  days  forgotten  by  the  boy.  Now  listen 
to  Goldsmith's  story : — "  It  was  on  this  occasion 
that  a  peasant  who  could  not  write,  and  did  not 
know  Aristides  personally,  applied  to  him  himself 
and  desired  him  to  write  the  name  of  Aristides 
upon  the  shell  by  which  his  vote  was  given  against 
him.  '  Has  he  done  you  any  wrong  ? '  said 
Aristides,  'that  you  are  for  condemning  him  in 
this  manner?'  'No,'  replied  the  peasant,  'but 
I  hate  to  hear  him  praised  for  his  justice.' 
Aristides,  without  saying  a  word  more,  calmly 
took  the  shell,  wrote  down  his  name  upon  it. 


182  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

and  contentedly  retired  into  banishment."  That 
is  a  story  that  might  surely  stir  a  child's  heart, 
and  inspire  him  with  a  generous  sentiment  which 
should  last  his  life  through.  Goldsmith,  if  he  tells 
a  thing  at  all,  tells  it  fully  and  well.  He  was  not 
cramped  by  the  need  of  getting  into  his  narrative 
everything  on  which  a  question  could  by  any 
possibility  be  founded.  If  an  incident  could  move 
the  mind  he  dwelt  on  it ;  if  it  was  uninteresting 
in  itself  he  passed  it  over. 

Happy  as  the  Greeks  were  in  their  poet,  scarcely 
less  happy  were  they  in  their  historian.  Herodotus, 
like  Homer,  could  delight  childhood  and  old  age 
alike.  There  is  nothing  in  his  pages  which  the 
schoolboy  would  have  skipped  because  he  could 
not  understand  it,  or  the  old  man  because  it  was 
childish.  It  delights  us  still. 

"  Age  cannot  wither  it,  nor  custom  stale 
Its  infinite  variety." 

Though  we  have  no  Homer  or  Herodotus, 
nevertheless  we  can  still  to  a  large  extent  keep 
our  children  in  the  company  of  great  writers. 
In  poetry,  in  fiction,  in  history,  in  biography,  I 
would  almost  add  in  geography,  I  would  have 
none  read  but  great  authors — authors  whom  we 
should  love  the  more  in  our  old  age  because  they 


VL— GREAT  WRITERS.  183 

had  been  the  delight  of  our  youth.  Through  the 
whole  of  English  history  we  could  not  take  a  boy 
in  the  narrative  of  one  great  writer  as  a  young 
Athenian  could  have  been  taken  in  the  narrative 
of  Herodotus  ;  nevertheless,  by  means  of  selections, 
we  could  keep  him  almost  always  among  big  men. 
It  would  matter  little  that  there  were  gaps  in  his 
knowledge  ;  there  are  great  gaps  in  every  one's 
knowledge,  even  in  the  knowledge  of  examiners. 
If  we  have  succeeded  in  making  the  past  really  live 
for  the  child  in  a  single  century,  nay,  I  will  say  in  a 
single  year  ;  if  we  have  made  him  feel  that,  "in  the 
dark  backward  and  abysm  of  time,"  men  "  lived 
and  moved  and  had  their  being,"  our  teaching  has 
not  been  in  vain.  I  remember  talking  to  a  country- 
man at  Old  Sarum,  where  a  huge  mound  marks 
the  site  of  an  ancient  town.  He  told  me  that  some 
graves  had  lately  been  found  there  of  men  who 
had  fallen  in  a  great  battle.  "  But  that  was  afore 
my  time,"  he  added,  by  way  of  apology  for  his 
want  of  accurate  information.  I  remember  like- 
wise telling  another  countryman  of  the  war  which 
had  just  broken  out  between  France  and  Germany. 
"  I  hope  it  won't  do  my  brother  any  harm,"  he  said. 
"  Your  brother,"  I  replied,  "  How  should  he  be 
harmed? "  "  Why,  he  has  lately  gone  to  America," 
was  the  answer.  To  the  rude  mind  there  are  but 


1 84  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

two  times  and  two  places — "  my  time,"  and  what 
was  "afore  my  time";  "  my  village,"  and  the  rest 
rest  of  the  world.  Both  these  countrymen  had,  I 
daresay,  attended  school ;  one  of  them  certainly 
had.  But  what  notion  can  be  formed  of  the  wide 
world  by  mere  maps  and  barren  books  of  geography, 
or  what  of  the  succession  of  time  by  tables  of 
chronology  and  bald  statements  of  events  ?  What 
knowledge  of  the  past  has  the  child  got,  though  he 
knows  perfectly  the  succession  of  the  Kings  of 
Israel,  and  can  tell  without  a  moment's  hesitation 
that  Pekah  succeeded  Pekahiah  and  not  Pekahiah 
Pekah  ?  "  What  is  Hecuba  to  him  or  he  to 
Hecuba  ? "  If  all  these  kings  are  anything  more 
to  him  than  mere  names,  they  are  all  "  afore  his 
time,"  and  all  no  farther  or  nearer  off  than  the 
kings  of  England.  It  is  by  imagination  alone 
that  we  throw  a  bridge  across  time  and  space.  If 
imagination  is  not  made  the  foundation  and  the 
buttress,  their  labour  is  but  lost  that  build  it.  It 
is  a  quality  inherent  in  all  but  the  lowest  natures, 
though  far  too  often  it  is  never  developed.  Often, 
too,  though  fanned  into  life  in  the  nursery  by 
stories  of  fairies  and  giants,  it  is  deadened  in  the 
parlour  by  dulness  and  respectability,  and  finally 
destroyed  in  the  schoolroom  by  school-books  and 
bad  teaching.  It  may  be  destroyed  even  by  great 


VI.— THE  MISUSE  OF  POETS.  185 

writers  if  they  are  either  forced  upon  us  at  an  age 
when  we  are  unfit  for  them,  or  if  they  are  misused 
as  instruments  of  teaching.  A  friend  of  mine  in 
this  University  told  me  that  before  he  had  come 
up  to  Oxford  he  had  read  the"^Eneid"  through 
with  great  delight.  Here,  in  preparing  for  the 
examination  known  as  Moderations,  he  was  taken 
through  it  by  his  tutor  once  more,  who  treated 
Virgil  not  as  a  great  poet,  but  as  a  convenient 
instrument  of  instruction  in  the  niceties  of  grammar. 
Under  the  guidance  of  this  teacher — 

"  One  whose  hand, 

Like  the  base  Indian,  threw  a  pearl  away, 
Richer  than  all  his  tribe  " — 

my  friend  gained  his  first  class  and  lost  for  ever  his 
enjoyment  of  the  "  JEneld." 

The  man  who  would  use  a  great  poet  for 
beating  grammar  into  a  boy,  who  would  parse 
"  Hamlet "  and  analyze  the  "  Paradise  Lost," 
would  not  for  one  moment  hesitate  to 

"  botanize 
Upon  his  mother's  grave." 

The  proper  destination  for  bad  poets  should  not 
be  the  shop, 

"  Where  pepper,  odours,  frankincense  are  sold, 
And  all  small  wares  in  wretched  rhymes  enrolled," 


186  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

but  the  school  grammar.  Cobbett  went  to  King's 
Speeches  for  his  examples  of  bad  English. 
Rxperimentum  fiat  in  corpore  vili.  If  you  must 
teach  grammatical  analysis  get  it  out  of  Tupper. 
Remember  how  the  Ensign  in  "  Tom  Jones " 
damned  Homer  with  all  his  heart,  saying  that  he 
carried  the  marks  of  him  on  his  back.  When,  in 
still  coarser  language,  he  goes  on  to  reproach 
Corderius's  mother  with  want  of  virtue,  we  listen 
to  his  abuse  with  more  patience.  For  between 
Corderius  and  Homer  there  is  almost  as  much  differ- 
ence as  between  Lindley  Murray  and  Shakespeare. 
Happy  is  the  child  who  has  the  run  of  a  good 
library,  and  who  for  a  certain  part  of  every  day  is 
allowed  to  read  at  random  ;  who  is  turned  loose  in 
the  rich  pasture  of  English  literature  to  browse 
where  he  pleases !  It  would  be  a  wise  practice 
in  every  school,  with  as  much  regularity  as  the 
morning  prayer  comes  round,  to  read  aloud  some 
fine  or  interesting  passage  from  a  book  which  was 
accessible  to  him  who  wished  to  read  more.  A 
friend  of  mine  took  into  her  house  a  poor  child 
who  had  fallen  sick  in  one  of  the  London  board 
schools.  Seeing  "  Ivanhoe  "  on  the  shelf,  he  asked 
for  leave  to  read  it.  Having  in  some  book  of  ex- 
tracts read  the  storming  of  Front-de-Boeufs  castle, 
he  longed  to  know  the  rest  of  the  story.  It  is  not 


VL— WRITING  DOWN  TO  CHILDREN.      187 

needful  that  every  word  of  what  is  read  aloud 
should  be  understood  by  the  hearers.  If  that  were 
the  case,  the  Epistles  of  St.  Paul  would  be  a  sealed 
book  to  all  but  scholars.  Sir  Walter  Scott,  in  his 
too  brief  "  Autobiography,"  writing  of  an  old  friend 
of  his  father's  who  was  the  original  of "  Jonathan 
Oldbuck"  in  the  Antiquary ',  says:  "He  was  the 
first  person  who  told  me  about  Falstaff  and 
Hotspur  and  other  characters  in  Shakespeare. 
What  idea  I  annexed  to  them  I  know  not,  but  I 
must  have  annexed  some,  for  I  remember  quite 
well  being  interested  in  the  subject.  Indeed,  I 
rather  suspect,"  he  goes  on  to  say,  "  that  children 
derive  impulses  of  a  powerful  kind  in  hearing 
things  which  they  cannot  entirely  comprehend ; 
and  therefore  that  to  write  down  to  children's 
understanding  is  a  mistake  ;  set  them  on  the  scent 
and  let  them  puzzle  it  out" l  Something  they  can 
always  grasp  ;  and  what  they  cannot  understand 
they  either  supply  by  some  strange  meaning  of 
their  own,  or  else  let  it  pass  by  unheeded.  Let  me 
illustrate  this  by  a  little  anecdote.  At  the  time  of 
the  Hungarian  War  of  Independence  my  grand- 
father, whose  sight  was  dimmed  by  eighty-six 
years,  had  the  newspaper  read  aloud  to  him  by  a 
lad  from  the  village  school.  One  of  his  daughters, 
1  Lockhart's  "  Life  of  Scott,"  ed.  1839,  i.  34. 


i88  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

coming  one  morning  into  his  room,  was  astonished 
at  hearing  some  such  account  of  the  campaign  as 
the  following :  "  Early  in  the  morning  General 
Jerusalem,  breaking  up  his  quarters,  led  his  sol- 
diers to  Jerusalem,  where  they  fell  on  Marshal 
Jerusalem's  army,  which  they  drove  in  headlong 
flight  as  far  as  Jerusalem,  where  they  found  an 
unexpected  support  in  Colonel  Jerusalem's  cavalry." 
"Why,  father,"  said  his  daughter,  in  amazement, 
"what  strange  stuff  is  this?"  "Oh,"  replied  the 
old  gentleman,  with  a  chuckle,  "the  boy  could 
make  nothing  of  the  names  of  the  Hungarians, 
Russians,  and  Austrians  ;  so  I  said  to  him :  '  Do 
as  the  dame-school  mistress  bade  her  scholars  do 
when  they  came  to  a  hard  word  in  reading  the 
Bible,  "Say  Jerusalem,  my  dears,  and  pass  on."' 
A  child  can  say  Jerusalem  for  himself  without 
being  told  to,  and  will  willingly  go  on  saying  it, 
provided  that  there  is  enough  left  that  he  can 
understand  and  enjoy.  "  He  should  not  be  dis- 
couraged from  reading  anything  that  he  takes  a 
liking  to,  from  a  notion  that  it  is  above  his  reach. 
If  that  be  the  case,  he  will  soon  find  it  out  and 
and  desist." J  By  wandering,  as  it  were,  among 
books,  each  one  finds  out  where  his  strength  and 
enjoyment  most  lie. 

1  Boswell's  "  Life  of  Johnson,"  iv.  21. 


VI— HARRIET  MARJIKEAU.  189 

It  is  often  at  a  very  early  age  that  the  mind  is 
influenced.  Sir  William  Jones,  we  are  told,  was 
only  in  his  fifth  year,  "  when  one  morning,  turning 
over  the  pages  of  a  Bible  in  his  mother's  closet, 
his  attention  was  forcibly  arrested  by  the  sublime 
description  of  the  Angel  in  the  tenth  chapter  of 
the  Apocalyse ;  the  impression  which  his  imagi- 
nation received  from  it  was  never  effaced."  x 

Harriet  Martineau,  whose  "  Settlers  at  Home " 
and  "  Feats  on  the  Fiord "  I  hope  still  give  to 
children  the  pleasure  which  they  gave  to  me, 
tells  how,  one  winter  Sunday  afternoon,  when  she 
was  seven  years  old,  she  was  kept  from  chapel 
by  some  ailment.  "  When  the  house-door  closed 
behind  the  chapel- goers,"  she  continues,  "  I  looked 
at  the  books  on  the  table.  The  ugliest-looking  of 
them  was  turned  down  open  ;  and  my  turning  it 
up  was  one  of  the  leading  incidents  of  my  life. 
That  plain,  clumsy,  calf-bound  volume  was  '  Para- 
dise Lost,'  and  the  common  blueish  paper,  with 
its  old-fashioned  type,  became  as  a  scroll  out  of 
heaven  to  me.  The  first  thing  I  saw  was  Argu- 
ment, which  I  took  to  mean  a  dispute,  and  supposed 
to  be  stupid  enough  ;  but  there  was  something 
about  Satan  cleaving  Chaos,  which  made  me  turn 
to  the  poetry ;  and  my  mental  destiny  was  fixed 
1  "  Life  of  Sir  William  Jones,"  p.  17. 


i go  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

for  the  next  seven  years.  That  volume  was  hence- 
forth never  to  be  found  but  by  asking  me  for  it, 
till  a  young  acquaintance  made  me  a  present  of  a 
little  Milton  of  my  own.  In  a  few  months,  I  believe 
there  was  hardly  a  line  in  '  Paradise  Lost '  that  I 
could  not  have  instantly  turned  to.  I  sent  myself 
to  sleep  by  repeating  it ;  and  when  my  curtains 
were  drawn  back  in  the  morning,  descriptions  of 
heavenly  light  rushed  into  my  memory."  * 

Shenstone,  who  had  learnt  to  read  of  the  old 
dame  whom  he  has  described  in  his  "  School- 
mistress," "  soon  received  such  delight  from  books, 
that  he  was  always  calling  for  fresh  entertainment, 
and  expected  that,  when  any  of  the  family  went 
to  market,  a  new  book  should  be  brought  him, 
which,  when  it  came,  was  in  fondness  carried  to 
bed  and  laid  by  him.  It  is  said  that,  when  his 
request  had  been  neglected,  his  mother  wrapped 
up  a  piece  of  wood  of  the  same  form,  and  pacified 
him  for  the  night."  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  was  but 
eight  when  he  received  his  turn  for  painting  by 
reading  the  " '  Jesuit's  Perspective,'  a  book  which 
happened  to  be  in  the  parlour  window  in  his 

1  "Autobiography  of  Harriet  Martineau,"  i.  42.  We  have 
here  an  instance  of  that  inaccuracy  which  too  often  marred 
Miss  Martineau's  work.  There  is  nothing  in  the  "Argument'1 
about  "  Satan  cleaving  Chaos." 


VI.— GIBBONS  CHILDHOOD.  191 

father's  house."  A  blessing  on  the  houses  of  old 
which  were  built  with  walls  thick  enough  for 
window-seats,  where  people  sat  and  read  and  left 
books  about  for  children  to  dip  into.  It  was  in  a 
window  in  his  mother's  room  that  Cowley,  when  a 
little  child,  found  Spenser's  "  Fairy  Queen,"  and  so 
by  reading  it,  "  became,  as  he  relates,  irrecoverably 
a  poet" * 

Gibbon,  when  a  boy  of  ten,  was  well  acquainted 
with  Pope's  "  Homer  "  and  the  "  Arabian  Nights." 
"  The  verses  of  Pope,"  he  writes,  "  accustomed  my 
ear  to  the  sound  of  poetic  harmony  ;  in  the  death 
of  Hector  and  the  shipwreck  of  Ulysses  I  tasted 
the  new  emotions  of  terror  and  pity  ;  and  seriously 
disputed  with  my  aunt  on  the  vices  and  virtues  of 
the  heroes  of  the  Trojan  war."  He  had  attended 
school  for  a  short  time,  but  his  twelfth  year  he 
passed  in  his  aunt's  house  where  he  had  the  com- 
mand of  a  library.  "  I  turned  over,"  he  continues, 
"  many  English  pages  of  poetry  and  romance,  of 
history  and  travels.  Where  a  title  attracted  my 
eye,  without  fear  or  awe  I  snatched  the  volume 
from  the  shelf;  and  my  aunt,  who  indulged  herself 
in  moral  and  religious  speculations,  was  more  prone 
to  encourage  than  to  check  a  curiosity  above  the 

1  Johnson's  "Works,"  vii.  I  ;  viii.  408;  Prior's  "Life  of 
Malone,"  p.  389. 


192  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

strength  of  a  boy.  This  year  I  shall  note  as  the 
most  propitious  to  the  growth  of  my  intellectual 
stature."  The  most  learned  of  English  historians, 
when  he  looked  back  on  his  past  life,  considered, 
you  will  observe,  that  his  mind  grew  the  fastest  in 
in  a  year  when  he  was  under  no  regular  teacher, 
but  was  left  to  "  that  free,  desultory  reading,  which 
was,"  he  tells  us,  "  the  employment  and  comfort  of 
his  solitary  hours."  x 

Johnson  had  the  great  good  fortune  to  have  the 
run  of  a  bookseller's  shop,  for  his  father  was  in  that 
trade.    When  he  was  quite  a  child  the  old  man  put 
into  his  little  boy's  hands  Martin's  "  Account  of  the 
Western  Islands  of  Scotland."     It  was  the  longing 
excited   in  him  by  that   book  to  see  the   places 
therein  described,  which  nearly  sixty  years  later, 
more  perhaps  than  anything  else,  led  him  to  under- 
take his  adventurous  tour  to  the  Hebrides.     When 
he  was  sixteen  he  left  school.     In  the  next  two 
years  "  he  read  a  great  deal  in  a  desultory  manner, 
without  any  scheme   of  study,  as   chance   threw 
books  in   his   way,  and   inclination  directed   him 
through  them.     He  used  to  mention  one  curious 
instance  of  his  casual  reading,  when  but  a  boy. 
Having  imagined  that  his  brother  had  hid  some 
apples  behind  a  large  folio  upon  an  upper  shelf  in 
1  Gibbon's  "  Miscellaneous  Works,"  i.  34,  40. 


VI.— SIR  WALTER  SCOTT.  193 

his  father's  shop,  he  climbed  up  to  search  for  them. 
There  were  no  apples  ;  but  the  large  folio  proved 
to  be  '  Petrarch,"  whom  he  had  seen  mentioned  in 
some  preface  as  one  of  the  restorers  of  learning. 
His  curiosity  having  been  thus  excited,  he  sat 
down  with  avidity,  and  read  a  great  part  of  the 
book."  It  was  no  doubt  the  remembrance  of  this 
eager  reading  which  made  him  say  in  his  old  age  : 
"  That  for  general  improvement,  a  man  should 
read  whatever  his  immediate  inclination  prompts 
him  to  ;  though  to  be  sure,  if  a  man  has  a  science 
to  learn,  he  must  regularly  and  resolutely  advance." 
He  added,  "What  we  read  with  inclination  makes  a 
much  stronger  impression.  If  we  read  without  in- 
clination half  the  mind  is  employed  in  fixing  the 
attention  ;  so  there  is  but  one  half  to  be  employed 
on  what  we  read."  J  Tranio  in  "  The  Taming  of 
the  Shrew "  had  given  much  the  same  advice  to 
his  master,  Lucentio  : 

"  No  profit  grows  where  is  no  pleasure  ta'en  ; 
In  brief,  sir,  study  what  you  most  affect." 

A  few  years  after  Johnson  visited  Scotland, 
Walter  Scott  was  a  little  boy  at  the  High  School 
of  Edinburgh.  "In  the  intervals  of  my  school 
hours,"  Scott  writes,  "  I  had  always  perused  with 

1  Boswell's  "  Life  of  Johnson,"  i.  57,  450 ;  iii.  43. 
13 


194  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

avidity  such  books  of  history  or  poetry  or  voyages 
and  travels  as  chance  presented  to  me — not  for- 
getting the  usual,  or  rather  ten  times  the  usual 
quantity  of  fairy  tales,  eastern  stories  and  ro- 
mances. These  studies  were  totally  unregulated 
and  undirected.  My  tutor  thought  it  almost  a  sin 
to  open  a  profane  play  or  poem.  I  found  in  my 
mother's  dressing-room,  where  I  slept  at  one  time, 
some  odd  volumes  of  '  Shakespeare,'  nor  can  I 
easily  forget  the  rapture  with  which  I  sat  up  in 
my  shirt  reading  them  by  the  light  of  a  fire  in  her 
apartment,  until  the  bustle  of  the  family  rising 
from  supper  warned  me  it  was  time  to  creep  back 
to  my  bed,  where  I  was  supposed  to  have  been 
safely  deposited  since  nine  o'clock."  J 

Wordsworth,  writing  of  his  life  at  Hawkshead 
Grammar  School,  whither  he  was  sent  in  his  ninth 
year,  says :  "  Of  my  earliest  days  at  school  I  have 
little  to  say  but  that  they  were  very  happy  ones, 
chiefly  because  I  was  at  liberty  then  and  in  the 
vacations  to  read  whatever  books  I  liked.  For 
example,  I  read  all  Fielding's  works,  '  Don 
Quixote,'  'Gil  Bias,'  and  any  part  of  Swift  that 
I  liked  ;  *  Gulliver's  Travels,'  and  the  '  Tale  of  a 
Tub,'  being  both  much  to  my  taste."  This  desul- 
tory reading  he  carried  on  even  at  the  University. 
1  Lockhart's  "  Life  of  Scott,"  i.  49- 


Vl.—GOD  ALMIGHTY'S  SCHOLARS,         195 

"  He  did  not  tread,"  says  his  pompous  biographer, 
"in  the  beaten  path,  prescribed  by  academic 
authority  and  leading  to  academic  distinctions. 
He  appears  to  have  indulged  a  feeling  of  intel- 
lectual pride  in  taking  a  devious  course — much  to 
the  disappointment  of  his  relatives  and  friends. 
His  last  summer  vacation  was  not  spent  amid  his 
books,  but  among  the  Alps.  The  week  before 
he  took  his  degree  he  passed  his  time  in  reading 
'  Clarissa  Harlowe.'  "  It  is  possible  that  "  aca- 
demic authority"  was  wrong,  and  the  young  poet 
was  right  There  are  other  "  overseeing  powers  " 
besides  a  University  Senate,  "to  kindle  or  re- 
strain." A  Board  of  Examiners  is  not  infallible; 
that  student  may  not  do  ill  to  whom,  in  contempt 
of  it,  nature  is  "  both  law  and  impulse."  There  are 
those  whom  Ferguson,  "  the  self-taught  philoso- 
pher," calls  "  God  Almighty's  scholars." »  I  knew 
three  undergraduates,  contemporaries  and  friends 
of  my  own  in  this  University,  who  might  be 
reproached  with  "  the  same  intellectual  pride  "  as 
Wordsworth,  "in  taking  a  devious  course,"  who, 
nevertheless,  are  not  the  least  distinguished  men 
of  their  time— Mr.  Burne- Jones,  Mr.  Morris,  the 

1  "Life  of  William  Wordsworth,"  ed.  1851,  i.  10,  48; 
James  Ferguson's  "  Select  Mechanical  Exercises,"  ed.  1778, 
p.xi. 


ig6  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

author  of  the  "  Earthly  Paradise,"  and  Mr.  Swin- 
burne. 

Charles  Darwin,  the  greatest  of  naturalists,  did 
so  little  in  the  seven  or  eight  years  he  passed  at 
Shrewsbury  School,  that  his  father  one  day,  to  his 
"  deep  mortification,"  said  to  him  :  "  You  care  for 
nothing  but  shooting,  dogs,  and  rat-catching,  and 
you  will  be  a  disgrace  to  yourself  and  all  your 
family."  "  Nothing,"  Darwin  writes,  "  could  have 
been  worse  for  the  development  of  my  mind  than 
Dr.  Butler's  school,  as  it  was  strictly  classical, 
nothing  else  being  taught  except  a  little  ancient 
geography  and  history.  Looking  back,"  he  con- 
tinues, "  as  well  as  I  can  at  my  character  during  my 
school  life,  the  only  qualities  which  at  this  period 
promised  well  for  the  future  were  that  I  had  strong 
and  diversified  tastes,  much  zeal  for  whatever  in- 
terested me,  and  a  keen  pleasure  in  understanding 
any  complex  subject  or  thing.  ...  I  was  fond  of 
reading  various  books,  and  I  used  to  sit  for  hours 
reading  the  historical  plays  of  Shakespeare  in  an 
old  window  in  the  thick  walls  of  the  school."  Here 
we  have  the  old  window-seat  once  more  doing  its 
blessed  work. 

I  may  be  told  that  all  the  men  whom  I  have 
instanced  were  cast  in  so  great  a  mould  that  they 
cannot  fitly  be  used  as  examples  for  common  life. 


VL— JAMES  CARLYLE.  197 

It  was  to  nature,  it  will  be  said,  not  to  the  accidents 
of  their  training  that  their  greatness  was  due. 
Johnson,  however,  was  not,  I  think,  far  wrong 
when  he  maintained  that,  "  the  true  genius  is  a 
mind  of  large,  general  powers,  accidentally  deter- 
mined to  some  particular  direction." 1  Unless 
liberty  is  given,  a  determining  accident  may  never 
occur,  and  the  genius  may  never  be  unfolded.  The 
poet,  as  he  surveyed  the  country  churchyard, 
mourned  over  the  waste  of  intellect : 

"  Perhaps  in  this  neglected  spot  is  laid 
Some  heart  once  pregnant  with  celestial  fire  ; 
Hands,  that  the  rod  of  empire  might  have  swayed, 
Or  waked  to  ecstasy  the  living  lyre." 

There  is  a  passage  in  Carlyle's  "  Life  of  his 
Father  "  which  moved  some  of  the  critics  to  scorn, 
but  which  seemed  to  me  not  unreasonable.  "  I 
know  Robert  Burns,"  he  writes  ;  "  and  I  knew  my 
father.  Yet  were  you  to  ask  me  which  had  the 
greater  natural  faculty,  I  might  perhaps  actually 
pause  before  replying."  He  goes  on  to  say  :  "  My 
father's  education  was  altogether  of  the  worst  and 
most  limited.  I  believe  he  was  never  more  than 
three  months  at  any  school.  What  he  learned 
there  showed  what  he  might  have  learned.  .  .  . 
1  Boswell's  "Life  of  Johnson,"  ii.  437,  n.  2. 


198  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

Poetry,  fiction  in  general,  he  had  universally  seen 
treated  not  only  as  idle,  but  false  and  criminal.  .  .  . 
Oh  !  when  I  think  that  all  the  area  in  boundless 
space  he  had  seen  was  limited  to  a  circle  of  some 
fifty  miles  diameter,  and  all  his  knowledge  of  the 
boundless  time  was  derived  from  his  Bible  and 
what  the  oral  memories  of  old  men  could  give  him, 
and  his  own  could  gather,  and  yet  that  he  was 
such,  I  could  take  shame  to  myself.  I  feel  to  my 
father — so  great,  though  so  neglected,  so  generous 
also  towards  me — a  strange  tenderness,  and  mingled 
pity  and  reverence  peculiar  to  the  case,  infinitely 
soft  and  near  my  heart.  Was  he  not  a  sacrifice  to 
me  ?  Had  I  stood  in  his  place  could  he  not  have 
stood  in  mine,  and  more  ?  " 

I  see  nothing  absurd  in  all  this.  James  Carlyle's 
natural  faculty  might  well  not  have  been  inferior 
even  to  that  of  Burns.  He  had  the  gift  of  elo- 
quence. "  None  of  us,"  says  his  son,  "  will  ever 
forget  that  bold,  glowing  style  of  his,  flowing  free 
from  his  untutored  soul,  full  of  metaphors  (though 
he  knew  not  what  a  metaphor  was),  with  all  manner 
of  potent  words,  which  he  appropriated  and  applied 
with  a  surprising  accuracy."  Had  the  right  acci- 
dent determined  his  "  large  general  powers,"  it 
might  have  been  of  books  which  he  had  written, 
not  of  houses  and  bridges  which  he  had  built,  that 


VI.— ELIZABETHAN  DA  VS.  199 

his  son  was  to  say  that  "  nothing  that  he  undertook 
to  do,  but  he  did  it  faithfully  and  like  a  true  man."1 
There  is,  I  believe,  the  same  number  of  good 
brains  born  into  the  world  in  every  generation, 
and  of  the  same  quality,  too.  Every  age  might 
be  Elizabethan,  were  the  children  who  belonged  to 
it  equally  favoured  by  their  surroundings.  But  the 
world,  I  fear,  can  never  again  witness  that  mighty 
outburst  of  noble  curiosity  which  followed  on  the 
discovery  of  the  New  World,  the  translation  of 
the  Bible,  and  of  the  great  master-pieces  of  Greece 
and  Rome.  As  we  look  back  upon  that  marvellous 
age  we  may  exclaim  in  Milton's  noble  words : 
"  Methinks  I  see  in  my  mind  a  noble  and  puissant 
nation  rousing  herself  like  a  strong  man  after  sleep, 
and  shaking  her  invincible  locks  ;  methinks  I  see 
her  as  an  eagle  muing  her  mighty  youth,  and 
kindling  her  undazzled  eyes  at  the  full  mid-day 
beam  ;  purging  and  unsealing  her  long-abused 
sight  at  the  fountain  itself  of  heavenly  radiance."  a 
Each  generation  may,  if  it  choose,  rouse  itself  also. 
The  fountain  of  heavenly  radiance  never  ceases  to 
flow. 

"  Labitur  et  labetur  in  omne  volubilis  aevum." 
("  It  runs  and  as  it  runs,  for  ever  shall  run  on.") 


1  "  Reminiscences,"  i.  8,  18-20. 

3  Milton's  "Works,"  ed.  1806,  i.  324. 


200  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

Thither  let  us  repair,  and  at  its  living  waters 
purge  and  unscale  our  long- abused  sight  If  no 
Golden  Age  of  Literature  can  ever  return,  we  shall 
yet  be  gladdened  by  one  of  those  Silver  Ages, 
which  till  late  years  almost  in  unbroken  succession 
had  followed  one  upon  the  other.  What  clusters 
of  famous  writers  has  our  country  seen,  drawn 
together,  too,  from  a  far  smaller  population  !  Look 
at  the  age  of  Anne,  when  there  were  not  perhaps 
in  the  whole  of  England  more  people  than  are  now 
living  in  London  and  its  suburbs.  Yet  "  these  few, 
these  happy  few"  could  boast  of  Defoe,  Swift, 
Addison,  Pope,  Steele,  Congreve,  Prior,  Gay, 
Arbuthnot,  and  Burnet.  The  last  years  of  George 
II.,  that  German  king  of  ours,  "  who  cared  neither 
for  Boets  nor  Bainters,"  and  the  first  years  of  his 
grandson,  who  gloried  in  the  name  of  Briton,  and 
who  set  up  as  a  patron  of  learning,  are  adorned  by 
the  names  of  Richardson,  Fielding,  Smollett,  Sterne, 
Johnson,  Hume,  Gray,  Collins,  Goldsmith,  Young, 
Burke,  Bolingbroke,  Horace  Walpole,  Adam  Smith, 
and  Blackstone.  How  bright  are  the  opening  years 
of  the  present  century — a  brightness  still  more  daz- 
zling to  us  who  are  surrounded  by  the  gloom  of  its 
close  !  What  "  radiant  files  "  ushered  it  in — Scott, 
Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  Campbell,  Southey,  Rogers, 
Lamb,  Hazlitt,  Cobbett,  Jeffrey,  Sydney  Smith, 


VI.— SILENT  POETS.  201 

Maria  Edgeworth,  Jane  Austen ;  and  then  fol- 
lowing close  behind  them  Byron,  Shelley,  Keats, 
Landor,  Moore,  Leigh  Hunt,  and  De  Quincey ! 
When  we  set  our  writers  against  the  writers  of  the 
least  favoured  of  these  generations  how  mean  and 
and  beggarly  is  the  show  we  make  ! 

"  Though  fallen  on  evil  days, 
On  evil  days  though  fallen  and  evil  tongues? 

we  may  bring  back  good  days  when  tongues  shall 
once  more  speak  as  they  spoke  of  yore,  if  only  we 
give  imagination  free  play.  Children  of  the  finest 
natures  are  indeed  rare ;  a  schoolmaster  may  easily 
pass  through  a  long  life  of  teaching,  and  not  have 
the  good  fortune  to  come  across  a  single  one. 
Nevertheless,  he  may  have  not  a  few  of  those 
whom  Wordsworth  calls  "  silent  poets  "  —  men 
"  silently  enthusiastic,  loving  all  quiet  things,  and 
poets  in  everything  but  words."  Such  a  man  was 
his  sailor  brother  who  was  lost  with  his  ship  off  the 
coast  of  Dorset. 

"  But  thou  a  schoolboy,  to  the  sea  hadst  carried 
Undying  recollections  !     Nature  there 
Was  with  thee  :  she  who  loved  us  both,  she  still 
Was  with  thee,  and  even  so  didst  thou  become 
A  silent  Poet  ;  from  the  solitude 
Of  the  vast  sea  didst  bring  a  watchful  heart 


202  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

Still  couchant,  an  inevitable  ear, 

And  an  eye  practised  like  a  blind  man's  touch." f 

We  can  nurse,  and  even  implant,  that  love  of 
reading  which  more  than  any  institution  or  law 
sweeps  away  the  inequalities  of  rank  and  fortune. 
"  There  is,"  it  was  finely  said  of  old,  "  there  is  as 
much  difference  between  the  learned  and  the  un- 
learned as  between  the  living  and  the  dead."  Your 
secondhand  bookstall  is  a  great  leveller  of  all  dis- 
tinctions. Learning  has  a  prescriptive  right  to  go 
ragged.  It  is  one  of  the  prerogatives  of  a  scholar 
to  wear  an  old  coat  For  a  few  pence  well  laid 
out  every  week  we  can  live  in  the  best  of  all 
company — among  the  finest  and  truest  gentlemen 
the  world  has  ever  seen.  When  they  come  and 
sit  with  us  by  our  fireside — Don  Quixote,  Sir 
Roger  de  Coverley,  my  Uncle  Toby,  Parson  Adams, 
the  Vicar  of  Wakefield — we  can  look  down  with 
quiet  pity  on  those  unfortunate  people  who,  for 
want  of  higher  and  better  society,  are  reduced  to 
playing  at  baccarat  with  princes.  Our  carpet  may 
be  ragged,  our  floor  may  even  be  bare  of  carpet, 
our  chairs  may  be  of  the  hardest,  and  our  fare  of 
the  plainest,  they  will  not  be  scorned  by  the  fine 
gentlemen  whom  we  have  invited.  Draw  the  cur- 
tain, trim  the  lamp,  put  a  fresh  lump  of  coal  on 
1  Wordsworth's  "  Life,"  i.  288  j  "Works,"  i.  355. 


VI.— A  GOODLY  COMPANY.  203 

the  fire,  and  then  call  in  the  goodly  company. 
There  they  stand  waiting  at  your  call  with  Shake- 
speare, Milton,  Scott,  and  a  host  of  others  ready  to 
usher  them  in.  Farewell,  outside  world,  with  your 
troubles  and  meanness,  your  brawls  and  strife, 
your  hard  struggles  and  petty  cares,  your  din  of 
politics,  and  your  low  mutterings  of  vast  changes 
in  the  very  fabric  of  society  ;  farewell  Tories, 
Liberals,  Radicals,  Socialists  ;  farewell  Church  and 
Dissent ;  welcome  thou  world  of  history  and  of 
fancy !  Thy  fabric  may  be  baseless,  thy  pageant 
insubstantial ;  thy  actors,  we  shall  soon  have  to 
own,  are 

"  All  spirits,  and 
\re  melted  into  air,  into  thin  air," 

yet  while  thou  dost  last,  and  they  throng  thy 
roomy  stage,  the  "  radiant  courts "  of  kings  and 
emperors  have  no  more  "  majestic  vision "  than 
that  which  fills  our  little  parlour.  In  the  palace 
of  King  Alcinous  a  blind  minstrel  sang  to  the 
company  as  they  feasted.  "  The  Muse,"  says 
Homer,  "  loved  him  dearly,  and  she  gave  him  both 
good  and  evil ;  of  his  sight  she  bereft  him,  but 
granted  him  sweet  song."  Those  who  seek  her 
the  Muse  loves  still — "  the  silent  poets  "  no  less 
than  those  who  have  utterance.  Of  much  we  may 


204  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

have  been  bereft,  but  the  solace  of  sweet  song  she 
freely  gives.     By  her  we  are 

"  taught  to  live 

The  easiest  way ;  nor  with  perplexing  thoughts 
To  interrupt  the  sweet  of  life." 

There  are,  however,  minds  of  no  low  order  which 
find  little  pleasure  in  the  study  of  the  past,  and 
which  turn  with  indifference  from  the  great  works 
of  imagination.  Whether  any  one  who  has  a  soul 
above  that  of  an  oyster  is  naturally  indifferent  to 
such  subjects  I  greatly  doubt.  I  never  yet  came 
across  an  intelligent  child  who  did  not  delight  in 
listening  to  fairy  stories.  Nevertheless,  whether  it 
comes  about  by  nature  or  by  stupid  teaching,  even 
at  a  somewhat  early  age  this  indifference  is  mani- 
fested. The  great  Darwin  who,  as  I  have  shown, 
in  his  boyhood  had  delighted  in  Shakespeare,  after 
the  age  of  thirty  could  no  longer  find  the  slightest 
enjoyment  in  the  mighty  poet,  though  to  the  end 
of  his  life  he  could  read  novels,  silly  novels,  too,  if 
onJy  they  ended  happily.  He  mourned  over  his 
mental  atrophy,  as  he  called  it,  but  he  could  not 
overcome  it.  This  atrophy  often  manifests  itself 
at  an  early  age.  Many  a  man  famous  in  science 
had  been  pronounced  a  blockhead  at  school,  to  the 
lasting  disgrace  of  his  teacher,  who  had  failed  to 


VI.— THE  STUDY  OF  SCIENCE.  203 

discover  his  genius,  or  even  worse,  who  had  for  the 
time  stifled  its  flame.  In  that  criticism  of  Milton's 
scheme  of  education  which  I  read  to  you  in  my 
last  lecture,  natures  such  as  these,  if  they  were 
known  to  Johnson,  were  treated  by  him  with 
neglect.  Poets,  orators,  and  historians,  you  will 
remember,  were  to  form  the  sole  reading  of  school- 
boys, because  they  would  supply  them  with  axioms 
of  prudence,  principles  of  moral  truth,  and  materials 
of  conversation.  The  only  result  of  forcing  authors 
such  as  these  on  those  to  whom  they  are  utterly 
distasteful  is  far  too  often  to  render  the  unwilling 
students  imprudent,  immoral,  and  dull.  Finding 
no  pleasure  in  the  only  knowledge  which  is  given 
them  they  look  upon  all  knowledge  as  wearisome. 
Had  they  been  allowed  to  do  what  Johnson  seems 
to  despise,  "to  watch  the  growth  of  plants  or 
the  motions  of  the  stars,"  they  would  have  far 
better  learnt  that  lesson  which  in  Socrates'  opinion 
was  what  we  had  to  learn — "  how  to  do  good  and 
avoid  evil."  "  Whatever,"  said  Johnson,  speaking 
of  his  visit  to  the  ruins  of  lona,  "  whatever  with- 
draws us  from  the  power  of  our  senses,  whatever 
makes  the  past,  the  distant,  or  the  future  pre- 
dominate over  the  present,  advances  us  in  the 
dignity  of  thinking  beings.  Far  from  me  and 
from  my  friends  be  such  frigid  philosophy  as  may 


206  WRITERS  AND  READERS. 

conduct  us  indifferent  or  unmoved  over  any  ground 
which  has  been  dignified  by  wisdom,  bravery,  or 
virtue.  That  man  is  little  to  be  envied  whose 
patriotism  would  not  gain  force  upon  the  plain  of 
Marathon,  or  whose  piety  would  not  grow  warmer 
among  the  ruins  of  lona." 

But  we  may  be  withdrawn  from  the  power  of  our 
senses  by  other  studies  than  those  which  deal  with 
the  character  of  man.  To  the  geologist  the  past 
speaks  in  tones  scarcely  less  deep  and  solemn  than 
to  the  student  of  history  ;  to  the  naturalist  in  his 
study,  as  the  endless  tribes  of  living  things  in  all 
their  variety  and  beauty  "flash  upon  his  inward 
eye,"  the  distant  seems  close  at  hand  ;  he  is  making 
his  way  through  the  forests  of  the  tropics,  or  sail- 
ing among  the  islands  of  the  East ;  while  to  the 
astronomer,  as  he  considers  that  the  earth  is  slowly 
but  surely  slackening  her  daily  course,  till  the  day 
must  come  when 

"  the  great  globe  itself 
Yea  all  which  it  inherit  shall  dissolve 
And  ... 
Leave  not  a  rack  behind," 

the  future  must  with  sadness  often  predominate 
over  the  present. 

Without   the   study   of  our  great   writers — our 


VI.-THE  GOOD  TEACHER.  207 

poets,  philosophers,  historians,  biographers,  and 
moralists — I  do  not  think  that  the  full  wisdom  ot 
life  can  be  attained.  But  if  we  cannot  have  the 
best,  let  us  go  to  the  second  best,  or  even  to  the 
third  best  Let  us  not  be  content  till  we  have 
implanted  in  every  child  a  love  of  something  that 
can  withdraw  him  from  the  power  of  his  senses. 
He  who  can  succeed  in  doing  this,  he  who  can  give 
the  imagination  strength  and  depth  and  purity,  may 
hope  that,  as  the  years  go  on,  those  who  have  come 
under  his  happy  influence,  as  each  one  finds 

"  from  day  to  day  his  little  boat 
Rock  in  its  harbour,  lodging  peaceably," 

will  give  each  his  blessing  and  his  praise  to  that 
wise  teacher 

"  Who  gave  him  nobler  loves  and  nobler  cares.' 


INDEX. 


ADDISON,  Joseph,   24,   32,  50, 

70,  80,  107,  139,  158 
Arbuthnot,  John,  161 
Arnold,  Matthew,  169 

BACON,  Francis,  58,  74 
Barbauld,  Anna  Lietitia,  66,  79, 

88 

Beattie,  James,  97 
Behmen,  Jacob,  67 
Bentham,  feremy,  88 
Bible,  The  English,  157 
Blair,  Hugh,  27 
Blount,  Sir  Thomas  Pope,  74 
Boswell,  James,  75,  93,  122,  175 
Bowles,  William  Lisle,  56 
Bright,  John,  159 
Bronte,  Charlotte,  75 
Browning,  Elizabeth  Barrett,  25 
Browning,  Rol>ert,   17,  52,  100, 

106 

Bunyan,  John,  159 
Burke,  Edmund,  76,  151 
Burne-Jones,  Mr.  Edward,  195 
Burney,  Frances,  71,  75,  79 
Burns,  Robert,  44,  97,  98,  149, 

197 
Byron,  Lord,  21,  23,  loo 


CARLYLE,  Dr.  Alexander,  95 
Carlyle,  James,  33,  148,  197 
Carlyle,  Thomas,  18,  22,  32,  33, 

41,68,  118,  127,  128,  148,  197 
Chesterfield,  Earl  of,  87 
Cibber,  Colley,  64 
C  lough,  Arthur  Hugh,  169 
Cobbett,  William,  186 
Coleridge,   Samuel   Taylor,  31, 

35.  55.  56,  68,  88,  107,  150 
Colman,  George,  73 
Corneille,  68 

Cowley,  Abraham,  49,  191 
Cowper,  William,  1 66 

DANTE,  40 

Darwin,  Charles  Robert,  196,204 
Darwin,  Erasmus,  30 
Dryden,  John,  26,  50,  60,  68, 
113-116 

ELIOT,  George,  75 
Erskine,  Lord,  87 
Eton  College,  162 

FARMER,  Richard,  41 
Ferguson.  James,  195 
Fielding,  Henry,  77,  85 


210 


INDEX. 


Fox,  George,  122 
Franklin,  Benjamin,  37 
Froude,   Mr.    James    Anthony, 
128 

GARRICK,  David,  17, 40,  45,  59, 

62,  72,  73.  95 
George  I.,  66-7 
George  II.,  200 
George  III.,  36,  71,  200 
German  Critics,  67 
Gibbon,  Edward,  66,  76,  77,  85, 

191 

Goethe,  70 
Goldsmith,  Oliver,  24,  30,  40, 

41,   71,   125,    132,    149,   160, 

179-182 

Gray,  Thomas,  17,  20,  40,  162 
Grimm,  Baron,  86 
Grote,  George,  157 

HARROW  School,  162 
Harwood,  Thomas,  158 
Ilazlitt,  William,  149 
Helps,  Sir  Arthur,  25 
Herodotus,  182 
Hervey,  James,  87 
Home,  John,  42,  95 
Homer,  155 
Horace,  105 

Hume,  David,  36,  39,  42,  86, 
94,96 

JAMES,  John,  126 
Jeffrey,  Francis,  18,  22,  99 
Johnson,  Samuel,  16,  17,  23,  26, 
29.31,  34,41,44,  54,  68,75, 
77,  So,  85,  93,  108,  122,  125, 


139,  144,  153,  158,  166,  170, 

175,  192,  205 
Jones,  Sir  William,  163,  189 
Jowett,  Professor,  172 

KEATS,  John,  23,  32,  100,  106 
Kneller,  Sir  Godfrey,  6 1 

LAMB,  Charles,  42,    134,    135, 

150 

Landor,  Walter  Savage,  138 
Lessing,  68 
London,  151 

MACAULAY,  Lord,  42,  89,  99, 

117-122,  127,  134,  157 
Mackintosh,  Sir  James,  163 
Martineau,  Harriet,  189 
Mill,  John  Stuart,  21,  176 
Milton,  John,  31,  50,  59, 75, 105, 

144,  159,  189,  199 
Mirabeau,  Marquis  of,  86 
Monckton,  Hon.  Miss,  75 
Montagu,  Mrs.,  73 
More,  Hannah,  79 
Morris,  Mr.  William,  195 
Murphy,  Arthur,  62,  95 

NORTHCOTE,  James,  149 
Novelists,  Female,  79 

OTWAY,  Thomas,  43 

PARR,  Samuel,  163 
Pepys,  Samuel,  62 
Pericles,  157 
Pindarism,  49 
Pomfret,  John,  27 


INDEX. 


211 


Pope,  Alexander,  23,  51,  55,65,   ! 

68,  103-110,  113 
Person,  Richard,  13 

RACINE,  44,  68 

Ramsay,  Allan,  98 

Ray,  James,  94 

Reynolds,  Sir  Joshua,  75,  132, 

149.  190 
Richardson,  Samuel,  51,  65,  75, 

77,86 

Robertson,  William,  31,  92 
Rousseau,  39,  88 
Ruskin,  Mr.  John,  25,  119,  129, 

138, 149 

SCHILLER,  88 
School  Histories,  179 
Schoolboy  Games,  161 
Scott,  Sir  Walter,  23,  30,  44, 92, 

96,  187,  193 
Scott,  William  (Lord  Stowell), 

125 

Scottish  Associations,  91 
Settle,  Elkanah,  26 
Shaftesbury,  Earl  of,  64 
Shakespeare,   William,  43,   45, 

50,  58-74,  105,  123 
Shelley,  Percy  Bysshe,  100,  106 
Shenstone,  William,  177,  190 
Sheridan,  Thomas,  44 
Siddons,  Sarah,  75 
Smith,  Adam,  39,  43,  94 
Smith,  Dr.  William,  180 
Smollett,  Tobias,  36 
Socrates,  145 


Southey,  Robert,  11,27,  56,  131 

Spenser,  Edmund,  75 

St.  John,  Henry  (Viscount  Bo- 

lingbroke),  109 
Sterling,  John,  22 
Sterne,  Laurence,  37,  41 
Stewart,  Dugald,  92,  99,  127 
Strahan,  William,  27,  36 
Swinburne,  Mr.  A.  C.,  196 

TATLER,  The,  65 
Taylor,  William,  12 
Teignmouth,  Lord,  163 
Tennyson,   Lord,    17,   23,    101, 

102,  106,  160 
Thackeray,  WTilliam  Makepeace, 

22,  90 

Travis,  Archdeacon,  13 
Trevelyan,  Sir  Georsje,  117 
Tupper,  M.  F.,  ib6 

VIRGIL,  185 

Voltaire,  42,  59,  66,  70 

WALPOLE,  Horace,  40,  41,  66, 

73,  76,  87,  133 
Warburton,  William,  68 
Warton,  Joseph,  51 
Wilkes,  John,  26 
Word-painters,  133 
Wordsworth,  William,    17,    18, 

21,  24,  31,39.  56'  5s' 92,  ioo, 

106,  152,  155,  172,  178,  194. 

20 1 

YOUNG,  Edward,  87 


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